A day trip to – Audley End House and gardens

About an hour outside London is a grand house that would impress anyone, except its original builder, as what you see is missing two-thirds of the original house.
Like most grand houses, this one owes its origins to the Dissolution of the Monastries, when the lands were granted to Sir Thomas Audley in 1538. A modest house was built, but that was demolished and a huge Jacobean palace was built instead by Thomas Audley’s grandson, Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk.Known as a “prodigy