One of England's greatest houses, set in a medieval deer park at Sevenoaks, with the park free to roam and the house ticketed
Open to visitorsa National Trust place — check opening times and admission before you go
Knole is one of the largest houses in England, a sprawling grey-stone pile begun in the 1450s by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, and lived in by the Sackville family since 1603 — they are there still, in a private wing. There’s a well-loved story that it’s a ‘calendar house’, with 365 rooms, 52 staircases and seven courtyards, one for every day, week and day of the week; the reality is looser than that, but it gives a fair sense of the scale of the place. Inside are Stuart beds, textiles and furniture that have scarcely moved in centuries.
The house sits in a medieval deer park of around a thousand acres, the last of its kind in Kent, where herds of fallow and sika deer have grazed since Tudor times. The park is free and open to walk, and it makes a fine outing on its own, with the Greensand Way passing through, and the village of Otford and the moated manor of Ightham Mote both within reach.
The deer are wild animals, so give them plenty of room, never feed them, and keep dogs close, particularly in autumn when the stags are rutting and in early summer when there are young about. The house opens on set days with an admission charge, while the park costs nothing to enter, though car parking is charged.
