Knole House

Summary

A Grade I listed English country house and former archbishop’s palace at Sevenoaks in Kent, one of England’s five largest houses, occupying four acres of floor space; built mostly between 1455 and 1608, with a central Jacobean facade and surviving state rooms; set within a 1,000-acre deer park; managed by the National Trust with the Sackville-West family retaining a long lease; used as a filming location for The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Burke and Hare (2010), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011).

About this location

Knole stands within Knole Park on the south-eastern edge of Sevenoaks in west Kent, twelve miles south-east of London. The house ranks among the five largest in England, occupying approximately four acres of floor space within its courtyards and ranges. The current structure dates mostly from the mid-15th century to the early 17th century, with the central facade and principal state rooms reflecting the tastes of Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, who substantially rebuilt and enlarged the house between 1603 and 1608 after it was granted to his ancestor by Queen Elizabeth I in 1566.

The history of ownership at Knole is long and includes several notable owners. Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, acquired the estate in 1419. It passed to the Archbishops of Canterbury from around 1458, under whom the core of the house was established. Henry VIII acquired the property from Archbishop Cranmer, and it subsequently came to the Crown before being granted to Thomas Sackville. The Sackville and Sackville-West family retained it for centuries; the writer Vita Sackville-West, who was denied inheritance because the house could only pass through the male line, made her feelings about Knole central to her life and her novel Orlando.

The house is built of Kentish ragstone in a late-medieval vernacular manner, with seven courtyards providing a rambling plan of great size and complexity. The Calendar Court takes its name from the thirteen gatehouses corresponding to the months, 52 steps corresponding to weeks, and 365 rooms corresponding to days in the year — a tradition originating in the Victorian period. The state rooms contain important collections of Jacobean furniture and tapestry. The park is a Registered Historic Park and Garden with a surviving herd of fallow and sika deer.

Productions filmed at Knole include: The Other Boleyn Girl (Columbia/BBC Films, 2008, directed by Justin Chadwick, starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn); Burke and Hare (Ealing Studios, 2010, directed by John Landis, starring Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis); Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Bros., 2011, directed by Guy Ritchie, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law); and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Walt Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer, 2011, directed by Rob Marshall, starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow — Knole provided period architecture and parkland back).