Sevenoaks - Knole

Knole, home of the Sackville family, is, with its inner courtyards and galleries, one of the largest and finest country houses in England. Begun in 1456 by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, it passed through the hands of the next three archbishops, but was demanded from the fourth, Thomas Cranmer, by Henry VIII, and consequently became crown property.

Queen Elizabeth I gave Knole away to her cousin Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, who had it considerably enlarged in 1603. Since that time, the house, now the property of the National Trust, has remained practically unaltered both externally and internally. The state apartments, first and foremost the royal bedroom, the ballroom and the Venetian ambassador's room, house an impressive art collection, including almost a dozen pictures by Reynolds, as well as works by Hoppner and Gainsborough, magnificent furniture decorated with gold brocade and pure silver, wonderful Persian carpets (1580), Mortlake tapestries and valuable porcelain. The writer Victoria Sackville-West (1892-1962), who was born at Knole, immortalized the house in her "Edwardians" of 1930; Virginia Woolf chose it as the setting for her novel "Orlando" (1928). A tour of the house is not complete without a stroll through the magnificent parkland with its peacefully grazing deer.