Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
The history of Audley End can be divided into three principal phases: the Tudor house, a conversion of the buildings of Walden Abbey, c.1538–1605; the Jacobean house, built by Thomas, 1st Earl of Suffolk, in two stages after c. 1605 and held by successive Earls until 1745, 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.