Summer stately home outing is a welcome escape

IN OUR heads, a summer visit to a stately home and gardens is always accompanied by a perfect blue sky. There was not much of that in evidence as Audley End House in Essex reopened to the public, but the grey skies didn’t dampen the anticipation of those of us who arrived at 10am prompt in the car park of this Jacobean mansion that has featured in all three series of The Crown.

Tickets had sold out as soon as they were made available online, and most of the takers were locals with small children desperate to see the horses or visit the playground, both of which, until lockdown, had been a regular part of their Saturday family outing.

Me? I just yearned to do something so familiar that it has been part of every summer for as far back as I can remember: wander round beautifully laid-out formal gardens (tick); have coffee and cake (tick – though from pop-up stalls as the main tearoom, indoors, was still closed); and then have a rummage in the gift shop (tick – and it had two doors for the one-way system that was in operation).

The only “miss” was the house itself. Its doors remained closed. It didn’t really matter. It was enough to escape the four walls of home for the big, empty outdoors of the rolling countryside. Sharing it with a smattering of other people felt curiously reassuring.