Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
was planned to forward a personal ambition, while the photograph was part of an enterprise
designed to safeguard the nation's heritage. The map links these two stories.
It is 400 years since Audley End House was built by a rising courtier who sought to im-
press. Its reputed cost was £200,000 - about twenty million pounds in today's money. James
I, when he saw it on completion in 1614, reportedly commented that the building was 'too
large for a King, though it might do for a Lord Treasurer'. The Earl of Suffolk, its builder,
was in fact James's Lord Treasurer, and soon was imprisoned for suspected embezzlement
from the royal coffers to help finance the building. This ended his grand plans for his family's
advancement.
This map was made in 1666, when Charles II decided to buy the palatial house, despite
his grandfather's remark, to stay in when he visited nearby Newmarket racecourse. The map
states that it is by George Sargeant, then well known for mapping private and Crown lands,
but accounts for work on royal buildings show that in May 1666 11 pounds was paid to one
Maurice Emmet and an assistant for 16 days preliminary measuring and survey at Audley
End.
The newly royal property is presented with panache on this typical 17th-century estate
map, the house and park set within a number of colourful decorative elements. A border of
leaves, flowers and berries runs around the outside. The large compass rose points to north
at the right of the map, with the town of Saffron Walden to the west, shown at the top of the
map. Ornate fretwork cartouches enclose the map's title, a table of acreage for areas of the
estate, and a scale bar at lower left. The grounds mix ornamental and productive areas, with
cherry and rose gardens, 'milk yard', brewhouse, barns, a dovecote, hop ground, and even a
vineyard and bowling alley. The park beyond reflects a trend to formality, with avenues of
trees.
The map was photographed in January 1933 at the Ordnance Survey office in Southamp-
ton, as part of a scheme to capture images of important maps. The Archaeological Officer
whose stamp appears on the photograph was OGS Crawford. He had served in the First World
War and, aware of how much destruction of cultural property it had caused, was keen to cre-
ate a centrally-held photographic record, in case the original maps were later lost. By an iron-
ic twist of fate, it was the records of Crawford's scheme that were themselves destroyed by
bombs in the Second World War. If the ambitions of Crawford and of the Earl of Suffolk were
not realised in the way that they had hoped, then the house, this print of the photograph, and
this splendid example of an estate map survive today, as testament to their endeavours.
