In the middle of a vast deer park, near Sevenoaks, Knole spreads its courts, its towers and its grey roofs as far as the eye can see. A former residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury seized by Henry VIII, this immense house is one of the largest in England, a labyrinth of stone in which the whole passage from Church to aristocracy can be read.
From archbishop to king
A manor is recorded at Knole as early as the mid-thirteenth century; but it was Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Bourchier who, having bought it in 1456, made it an episcopal palace, adding a great court and an imposing castellated gatehouse tower. His successors enlarged it in their turn. In 1538, at the height of the Reformation, Archbishop Cranmer had to cede it to Henry VIII, who, having admired the house while hunting nearby, coveted this residence close to London and exchanged it for properties of lesser value. Like so many other Church properties, Knole thus passed to the Crown: the future Mary I stayed here while her father settled his 'great matter', his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Then, over the reigns, the house passed from royal hand to favourite's hand. In 1566 Elizabeth I gave it to her cousin Thomas Sackville; but he only truly took possession of it in 1603, for four thousand pounds, and remodelled it thoroughly between 1605 and 1608 — new roofs, stables, staterooms. His family (the Earls and then Dukes of Dorset) owned it thereafter for centuries and gave it its final shape.
The house of a thousand rooms
Knole owes its fame to its prodigious size and to a pretty arithmetical legend: it is said to have as many courtyards as there are days in the week (7), as many staircases as there are weeks in the year (52), and as many rooms as there are days in the year (365) — hence its nickname of 'calendar house'. Under the Sackvilles the house filled with royal furniture, tapestries and portraits, making it an extraordinary conservatory of English decorative art: it holds, in particular, Stuart staterooms furniture salvaged from the royal palaces, among the rarest in England. Built of brick and grey stone, deliberately sober outside, it hides an interior of rare refinement — a great hall with a carved screen, a staircase painted in trompe-l'œil, panelled galleries. Knole inspired the novelist Vita Sackville-West, who grew up there, and her friend Virginia Woolf, who made it the setting of her Orlando.
What to see
- The successive courts and the 'calendar house' silhouette.
- Bourchier's castellated gatehouse tower and the great hall.
- The Stuart royal furniture, the painted staircase and the tapestries.
- The immense deer park surrounding the house.
Did you know?
The 'calendar' legend (7 courts, 52 staircases, 365 rooms) was probably born after the fact, so vast is the house: no one, in truth, has ever been able to count its rooms exactly. But the fable says well the giddiness Knole produces — a house so great that it is measured, for want of better, on the scale of time itself.
Markers
Knole lies at Sevenoaks, in Kent, south-east of London. It is today a house in the care of the National Trust, surrounded by a deer park.
Quiz
- To whom did Knole belong before being seized by Henry VIII?
- The Archbishop of Canterbury
- The King of France
- A monastic order
- What is Knole's nickname, tied to its size?
- The 'calendar house'
- The 'glass house'
- The 'king's house'
- Which family received Knole from Elizabeth I in 1566?
- The Sackvilles
- The Boleyns
- The Cecils