Vine House, Audley End Kitchen Garden

The kitchen garden at Audley End has not always been where it is now. In the 1750s the Countess of Portsmouth moved it away from the house to the far side of the River Cam, near the stables; in 1768 Sir John Griffin Griffin, her sister's son and heir to the estate, enlarged it and added glasshouses and an orangery. According to a garden historian, John Hobcroft designed a classically inspired building in three parts in 1774-1776, with a central greenhouse between two hothouses.

What followed is disputed. The register of historic parks and gardens states that these structures were demolished in 1802, when the vine house was built. The historian argues that 1802 saw only the remodelling of the central section, and that Hobcroft's range was replaced by the present large glasshouse in the 1820s; English Heritage simply says it was standing before 1828.

In 1884 the Gardeners' Chronicle praised the work of head gardener James Vert. After 1900 the building declined, and it was badly decayed when the Ministry of Works acquired the estate in 1948. English Heritage restored it in the 1990s with the Henry Doubleday Research Association, now Garden Organic, in a project of about three years costing some £500,000; a visitor's account gives 1995 for the vinery. The rest of the kitchen garden was restored in 1999 using an 1877 plan and the 1874 journal of gardener William Cresswell, and on completion in 2000 it was opened by Prince Charles.

The glasshouse stands in one of the four enclosures of the walled kitchen garden, about 350 metres north-west of the house. The register gives its length as 52 metres, or 170 feet, while the garden historian describes it as over 50 metres. It is split into five sections with different growing conditions: the end houses were reserved for peaches, the central sections for vines, and a taller middle section for flowering plants.

Ventilation relies on large sash windows, a scaled-up version of the domestic kind, worked by weights and cords. Hobcroft's earlier building had been given a hot wall in 1802, with flues built into the brickwork of the rear wall and stoves on its outer side. During the 1990s restoration, masons used handmade bricks matched to the originals and lime mortar.

Nearby stands an orchard house; a drawing of it was published in 1860 in a guide to the design of such buildings, a sign that the estate kept up with horticultural innovation. The park at Audley End is registered at Grade I on the register of historic parks and gardens.

The glasshouse still serves its original purpose. English Heritage singles out its grapevines, the ones on display being more than a hundred years old, and a visitor's account describes it as the house for grapes and peaches. In the nineteenth century the arrangement was clear: peaches at either end, vines in the centre and flowering plants in the taller section.

Around it, the kitchen garden is run on Soil Association organic principles. According to Wikipedia it holds some 120 apple, 60 pear and 40 tomato varieties; the produce goes to the estate restaurant or is sold to other restaurants and box schemes, and at times it has supplied the Dorchester Hotel. Beds of wildflowers planted for pollinating bees and long rows of lavender line the outside of the glasshouses.

The kitchen garden lies north-west of the house, close to the stables, so the vine house combines easily with the Victorian stable yard, the 1880s service wing and the 1832 parterre, whose 182 beds are cut into the lawn. Capability Brown's landscape park, Robert Adam's Tea House Bridge and the Pond Garden, created in the 1860s, extend the walk. In hot weather the air inside the glasshouses can be oppressive. Audley End station, about an hour from London Liverpool Street, is a 20 to 30 minute walk from the house.