Knole, Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent
Knole is one of England's largest country houses. It is reputed to be a calendar house, having 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards. The house was built by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, between 1456 and 1486, on the site of an earlier house. In 1538 the house was taken from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer by King Henry VIII. In 1566, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it came into the possession of her cousin Thomas Sackville whose descendants have lived there since 1603. These include writer Vita Sackville-West who wrote 'Knole and the Sackvilles' in 1922. In 1946 the house and about 43 acres of the park passed into the care of the National Trust. It is still the home of the Sackville-West family. In the early 17th century, Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, transformed the late medieval archbishop's palace into a Jacobean style mansion built of local ragstone.
