How many rooms do you have in your home? How much work does looking after them create?
Imagine being responsible for a home with three hundred and sixty five rooms, one for each day of the year? That’s the challenge the National Trust have in looking after Knole House; well the Sackville family still live in part of this sprawling mansion so the work is shared; even so Knole provides a huge challenge and has undergone extensive works in recent years.
There are endless reasons to visit the home which dates from the fifteenth century. The Inigo Jones decorated seventeenth century state rooms are captivating and lure many people but there is so much to engage with here, room after room and, if your scheduling allows, do book in advance for one of the Attic Tours, it may not sound overly glamourous but there is joy in getting to understand the past and seeing the areas that made life possible, also to see how time wrought change in lifestyles and thus use of the house.
While you wander Knole, look for the unexpected, search the corners, find the detail, craftsmanship, design, ingenuity, joy and sometimes oddity but look beyond the immediately obvious and a wonderful layer of understanding and pleasure greets you.
Deer roam the grounds of Knole House, roaming the thousand acre park alongside the constant stream of visitors who come to see the deer and one of the countries most fabulous homes.
It was probably the first National Trust property I visited at a very tender age and has held a fondness for me ever since.
There are plenty of commentaries on Knole, it has a great history and is important architecturally and most of all it is a lovely home to visit. So much has been said by others and perhaps better than I can put it, just let me say that Knole’s attraction will never wane and getting to know some of the lives that were lived here, the influence those people have had upon our landscape and culture, it’s an important pursuit and a pleasurable one to dedicate some time to, you’ll be richer for the experience.
National Trust Collections Treasures of Knole
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