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Photo: Libby norman, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Fry Art Gallery celebrates the art and design by 20th and 21st-century artists - foremost are the Great Bardfield group including Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious.
The Fry Art Gallery is an art gallery in Saffron Walden, Essex. Recognised as an Accredited Museum by Arts Council England, it displays work by artists of national significance who lived or worked in North West Essex during the twentieth century and after. The gallery is known for its comprehensive collection of work by the Great Bardfield Artists, including Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious.
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2.7-hectare ornamental Dutch garden with a hedge maze, laid out from 1828, and restored to its 1870s heyday.
Magnificent "prodigy" house: as Elizabeth I toured the country, nobles vied to create mansions suitable for her and all the courtiers and retinue. This house, created from the dissolved Walden Abbey, did so in 1578. "I know, I'll smash it all down and make a much bigger one" reasoned the Earl of Suffolk. He hosted King James I here, the least he could do since he'd embezzled royal funds to pay for it. Charles II owned it for a time. Over the 18th century Sir John Vanbrugh whittled it down to a third of its sprawl, and this is the version you see nowadays. Capability Brown landscaped the gardens. The "Temple of Concord" seen east is a mock-ruin built in 1791 to celebrate King George III's recovery from insanity, which didn't last long but they kept the "folly".