Monday 28 July 2008

KNOLE - A Complex Beautiful House and Garden

The week before last we paid our second visit to Knole House. This is a nice day trip as it is only 50 minutes from home. Within it's glorious deer park setting, Knole reveals itself as a complex and beautiful house, which appears like a small village when viewed from a distance. An archbishop's palace, a royal house and from 1603 to the present day, the Sackville family home, Knole has remained largely unchanged for 300 years and is certainly one of the most intgriguing houses in England.

Thirteen superb state rooms laid out as much as they were in the 17th century to impress visitors by the wealth and standing of the Sackville family. The house boasts many famous paintings and tapestries. The house inspired Vita Sackville-West, who was born at Knole, to write her best selling novel 'The Edwardians' and was also the setting for Virginia Woolf's famous novel 'Orlando'.

Knole is set at the heart of the only remaining medieval deer park in Kent where Sika and Fallow deer roam freely amongst ancient oak, beech and chesnut trees. Over
200,000 trees have been planted since the great storm of 1987 which destroyed 70% of these trees in the park - the abundance of decaying wood (see some of the photos) now provides a haven for wildlife.

Lord Sackville's private garden has been in existence for over 500 years and provides the most beautiful view of the house. The Wisteria is very old and well established creating the most wonderful display of scented blooms along the garden walls in May. We are planning to go back next May.

So if you come with me I'll take you round the inner courtyards, the outside of the house from various angles, and a little of the gardens and deer park, to see it in pictures for yourself.













































The ice House

The tradesman's entrance
Please bear with me if I am not visiting your site so often
I am still working on many issues to bring my hard drive back to where it was before the rebuild
One of the issues with my computer now is that it will not scroll properly
making it not so easy to scroll through blogs
I am hoping this will be rectified when my graphics card drivers
are returned to their original form























12 comments:

Sara at Come Away With Me said...

What a wonderful place that is! The buildings are so huge with so many different facades...I kept enlarging the photos to get a better look. You got some lovely shots of the gardens too. Thank you for taking us to Knole.

It boggles my mind to try and imagine what it must feel like to be part of a family that has had the same family seat/home since 1603!

Vee said...

Incredibly lovely and you've captured it all so beautifully. The flowers and grounds are amazing and all the little Bambis are adorable.

Don't worry about visiting, Barbara. Once you get that computer back up and at'em, life will return to some semblance of normal.

duopastorale said...

Great photos. A beautiful place to click away! I love the close one of the deer. I hope to do some NT visiting this summer.

Maria said...

Please come over to my blog, there is something for you! ;)

Mmm said...

Thx for the heads up. Love the gardens.

Charm and Grace said...

Oh my goodness... those deer are extraordianary. How did you get so close without them running away? And the walled garden just below the deer photos is so reminiscent of the Secret Garden. The tree stump with the pinkish flowers cascading out of it almost looks like hands. Bless you with your continuing computer woes... been there, done that, not fun!

Christi

Linda said...

Beautiful place. Thanks for sharing it with us.

a woman who is said...

I did what Sara did and clicked on all the photos. Very interesting place.

The deer seemed very tame, how sweet they are.

Thanks for the tour!

Patsy said...

Thanks for the trip to Knole. Wish I could have been there.
Patsy

Rhondi said...

Hi Barbara
Thanks for the tour of Knole. I've been there twice. It was many years ago but I stil recall how great it was. The last time we were there, there had been some big storm and lots of the huge oak trees had been blown over. It was so sad to drive in and see it like that. Somewhere I have a picture of me petting those cute little deer.
Your pictures are wonderful. Hugs,Rhondi

Melissa @ The Inspired Room said...

Oh, the lovely history and amazing architecture! Beautiful gardens too...

Thank you for the peek!

Lavinia said...

Superb, superb. The best of England. My sister gave me a copy of the diaries of Vita Sackville-West some years ago...entertaining reading. The age of this garden is amazing.....I would love to visit a garden this old......

Utterly lovely photos. Thanks!