Best Hide and Seek House Ever

Knole House, the childhood home of Vita Sackville-West, is a country estate with an intriguing history of ownership that includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, King Henry VIII and the fascinating Vita herself.

Vita Sackville-West's work 'Knole and the Sackvilles' is one of the classics on English country houses, and her good friend, Virginia Woolf, wrote 'Orlando' largely based on the history of the house and family. - The Heritage Trail

The house was built by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, between 1456 and 1486, on the site of an earlier house belonging to James Fiennes, the Lord Say and Sele who was executed after the victory of Jack Cade's rebels at the Battle of Solefields. On Bourchier's death, the house was bequeathed to the See of Canterbury — Sir Thomas More appeared in revels there at the court of John Morton — and in subsequent years it continued to be enlarged, with the addition of a new large courtyard, now known as Green Court, and a new entrance tower. In 1538 the house was taken from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer by King Henry VIII along with Otford Palace.

In 1566, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it came into the possession of her cousin Thomas Sackville whose descendants the Earls and Dukes of Dorset and Barons Sackville have lived there since 1603 (the intervening years saw the house let to the Lennard family). Most notably, these include writer Vita Sackville-West (her Knole and the Sackvilles, published 1922, is regarded as a classic in the literature of English country houses); her friend and lover Virginia Woolf wrote the novel Orlando drawing on the history of the house and Sackville-West's ancestors. The then laws of primogeniture prevented Sackville-West herself from inheriting Knole upon the death of her father Lionel (1867–1930), the 3rd Lord Sackville, and the estate and title passed to her uncle Charles (1870–1962). - Wikipedia


After leaving the deer park one passes through the Green Court and then the Stone Court before entering the interior through a truly great great room. Contained within the many other rooms one finds a rare collection of Stuart furniture, tapestries, paintings, and intricately detailed woodwork throughout, especially on the Italianate main stairway and the fireplace in the Great Chamber. Sorry, no photos allowed.

Knole is an English country house in the town of Sevenoaks in west Kent, surrounded by a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) deer park. One of England's largest houses, it is reputed to be a calendar house, having 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards. It is remarkable in England for the degree to which its early 17th-century appearance is preserved, particularly in the case of the state rooms: the exteriors and interiors of many houses of this period, such as Clandon Park in Surrey, were dramatically altered later on. The surrounding deer park is also a remarkable survivor, having changed little over the past 400 years except for the loss of over 70% of its trees in the Great Storm of 1987. - Wikipedia (When asked, our guide admitted that the calendar house idea is perhaps stretched a bit. Only one of those numbers is exactly true. The 7 courtyards perhaps?)