In July last year on a visit to the East of England, I stopped by the English Heritage site of the Audley End House and Gardens, located in the very northwest corner of Essex, near a rather affluent town called Saffron Walden. The site first played host to a monastery, but came into private ownership after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1538. After that, several grand houses - and parts thereof - were erected and demolished over the next 200 years or so, until a final version was settled upon by its designers and architects in 1758, which you see here.

Audley End House was requisitioned by the British government in 1941, and was used as a military encampment before the Special Operations Executive (SOE) moved in. In particular, the site became a training school for Polish SOE agents, who would learn the basics of radiotelephony, photography, sabotage, weapons handling, and covert operations before either being sent to other schools for specialist training, or sent to "set Europe ablaze", as Churchill put it. The house was then sold by its owner, the 9th Lord Braybrooke, to the Ministry of Works (which went on to become English Heritage) in 1948, though it is worth noting that all of the possessions inside the house remain the property of the Braybrooke family, who request that visitors do not take photographs inside the house. This is something of a pity, considering the fine art collection within, and one of the largest collections of taxidermised avians in the world (English aristocrats - go fig).

Hope you enjoy!