No Other Palace in the Kingdom Will Compare with It: The Evolution of Audley End, 1605-1745

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun,The history of Audley End can be divided into three principal phases: the Tudor house, a conversion of the buildings of Walden Abbey, c.I538-I605; the Jacobean house, built by Thomas, ist Earl of Suffolk, in two stages after c. i605 and held by successive Earls until I745, save for the period 1667-1701 when it was a Royal Palace; and the rehabilitation and later expansion of the surviving core of the Jacobean house from 1752 onwards, by Elizabeth, Countess of Portsmouth, and her successors. The aim of this paper is to give a preliminary account of some of the results of research in progress for the Department of the Environment into the first two of these phases.The study began as the investigation by an archaeologist of the evidence for the site and form of Walden Abbey, but later essentially archaeological techniques of investigation were applied to the surviving building as a whole. Structural details visible in floor and roof voids have been recorded, and correlated with records made during maintainance work undertaken over the past thirty years. The use of particular materials and techniques can now frequently be seen as diagnostic of a single period of work, making it possible to correlate one observed sequence with another. Such periods can be broadly dated by reference to associated architectural and decorative details, and more precisely dated if they can be related to, or seen to be 'stratified' between, the documented alterations. There are still major areas of uncertainty, but these should steadily diminish, since the principle has now been established that all structural features exposed or replaced during maintainance and other building work will be recorded, whether or not they appear to be significant at the time. Orthodox excavation has so far been undertaken only at the east end of the south wing, in connection with the reconstruction of the decayed ground floor. The results were almost entirely related to the post-I745 phase, and will be reported elsewhere in due course. Particular attention has been paid to the dating of the modelled plaster ceilings and their associated friezes. In addition to 'archaeological' investigation of their relationships to other structural elements, a preliminary programme of scientific analysis of samples has been undertaken by Mr J Evans of the North-East London Polytechnic, for the Ancient Monuments Laboratory. The results show that classification according to the characteristics of the sand and other constituents is possible, at least at Audley End. Two principal groups emerged, representing Jacobean and eighteenth-nineteenthcentury work respectively. The preliminary results are...

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