Audley End House and Garden is a huge manor, full of beautiful garden life, a large walk around, and a few historical sites. There is the main house, which currently isn’t open, however there is plenty to see around the gardens and grounds themselves. On this occasion, we actually went along for the Easter Trail – which can be booked ahead of time. This trail is completely outdoors, and includes finding fact signs about the grounds itself, filling in a pamphlet that you can get on the grounds or print from home.
Through this trial, we learned about the house, the architecture behind it, and the whole reason the house is there to begin with. We learned why Charles II bought the palace, what various rooms were for within the manor, and even the name of the housekeeper who best took care of the place. A few of these signed stated you could get the information from bulletin boards, but we couldn’t find any of these and instead had to spend some time googling and re-searching them, but that added to the fun. We started reading Wikipedia articles about the house, finding out more and more. Some of these questions were word scrambles, others were multipole choice or fill in the blank.
Once we had all of the questions answered, we had explored a lot of the grounds. These questions are around the manor itself, but there is a big building towards the back – pillars on a hill looking like something out of Rome, that we explored as well. Once we had handed in our Easter Trail questions, we got our chocolate prizes, and went for a walk around the area. There are small bridges and buildings, as well as a horse stable that you can peak into. We spent a lot of time wondering around the Kitchen Garden at Audley End House – where they use to grow most of the food for the people of the manor. There are tons of different plants being planted there – from types of plums to apples to flowers. The tress are grown in a way that make them easy to harvest, and a few of the greenhouses have holes that trees have grown into, so that they can be better monitored. It’s really interesting to see it all!
We had a lovely time at Audley End House – between the grounds themselves and the little activity about, we were able to have such a fun time. It’s well worth an explore – and we plan on going back when the train is there for riding and the manor itself is open to the public. Audley End House is apart of the English Heritage so if you have a membership, it’s well worth having a look!
