KNOLE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 101, 31 March 1937, Page 10

KNOLE

AN ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE. HOME OF THE SACKVILLES. Deep in flic heart of Kent lies Knoie, the ancestral home of the Sackville lnmily and one of the largest and most beautiful 'Tudor mansions. It is typically English. No other country, as Miss Sackville- West asserts in “Knoie and the Saekvilles,” could have produced it and into no other country would it settle with such harmony and such quiet, writes W. Branch Johnson, in a .British publication. At the edge of its thousand-acre park is Sevenoaks, and from .the town the main approach leads through avenues of beech, oak and chestnut to Knoie itself. Not from the approach, however, can you realise that the house covers nearly four acres of ground or that it contains 7 courtyards, 52 staircases, and 365 rooms! For a more adequate appreciation of its extent—to say nothing of its architectural richness and exquisite setting—you must see it either from the Duchess seat in the garden on the south side, or from tho Cricket Plain to the north-east. From either of these spots Knoie leaps to life, dark and vaguely sinister or gay and sparkling . . . hut always lovely. Though dating for the most part from the seventeenth century, Knoie may possibly stand on the site of a Roman building. Medieval records of the existing house are scanty. Building was begun by Archbishop Bourcliier, who died in 1456, but not until the house came into the possession of the Sackville family, in Elizabeth’s reign, did it assume the shape it now displays; since the time of Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, its main construction and external features have been but little changed—even the leaden waterspouts still bear his initials and the date 1605. It had been bestowed upon him by his Queen and cousin, “to keep him near her at Court and Council.” The Queen, in her turn, had had it from her favourite, the Earl of Leicester (one of tho principal galleries is still called the Leicester Gallery). Among its previous owners were the Pcmbrokes, the Norfolks, the Saye and Seles, and the Archbishops of Canterbury, including Bourcliier and Cranmcr. Crnnmer surrendered it to Henry the Eighth. Without the Saekvilles (first Earls, then Dukes, of Dorset), England would have been the poorer in statecraft, in letters and in romance. Thomas, the first Earl, rose to he Lord High Treasurer of England; he was also a poet whose “Gorhoduo” was the first English tragedy and of whose “Mirror for Magistrates” Professor Saintsbury wrote that “the poetic value of the whole is extraordinary.” Edward, the fourth Earl (painted by Vandyck), was several times Ambassador to the French Court, Lord Chamberlain, Lord Privy Seal, and also Commissioner for planting Virginia. a “sober and consistent gentleman” who had inherited an estate wasted by his predecessors in riotous living. Still, he did manage to secure for himself another in America—-all those parts of the east coast which to-day includes New York, Boston and Philadelphia and—as then described—“are not yet inhabited by Christians.” The sixth Earl, Charles, makes two claims upon posterity—firstly as tho author of that bright and delightful song, “To All You Ladies Now on Land,” and also as the protector of Nell Gwvn before she was summoned by his royal namesake. His son, Lionel, was created first Duke; but by the time John Frederick, the fourth Duke (painted by Gainsborough), acceded to the title, Horace Walpole wrote of Knoie that “the place is stripped of its beeches and its honours, and has neither beauty nor prospects.” It had, however, the game of cricket; John Frederick, like his father and his uncle, was an enthusiast and besides playing himself (in 1734), employed a number of professionals—chiefly, it seems, to indulge in an annual match with the team captained by Lord Middlesex. Cricket has always been a popular game in the neighbourhood. The “Vine,” at Sevenoaks, is said to he the oldest cricket ground in England.

Such, then, are a few of the ghosts haunting the many splendid rooms at Knoie—the Leicester Gallery, tho Ballroom, tho Crimson Dining Room, the Spangled Dressing Room, King James I Bedroom, and others. But most charming of all are the rooms formerly inhabited by Lady Betty Germaine.

Lady Betty was lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne and intimate friend of the first Duchess. “Strangers,” writes Miss Sackville-AVest. “usually seem to like these two little rooms host, coming to them as they do, rather overawed by the splendour of the galleries; they are amused by the smallness of the four-poster, square as a box, its creamy lining so beautifully quilted; by the spinning wheel, with the shuttle still full of old flax ;and by the ring-box. containing a number of plain-cut stones, which could be exchanged at will into the single gold setting provided. The windows of these rooms, furthermore, look out on to the garden; they are human, habitable little rooms, reassuring after the pomp of the ballroom and the galleries. In the sitting room there is a small portrait of the prim lady, Lady Betty Germaine, sitting very stiff in a blue brocaded dress; she looks as though she had been a martinet in a tight, narrow way.” The grounds, laid out by the first Earl and scarcely altered since, are a magnificent example of the landscape gardener’s art, with its lawns and herbaceous borders and groves of trees and large shrubbery known as the Wilderness. The park beyond is the resort of every kind of game. “It has sometimes happened,” Miss Sackville-AVest tells us, “that I have found a stag in the banqueting hall, puzzled but still dignified, strayed in from the park since no harrier cheeked him.” Tt is seldom that visitors to Knole chance upon so delightful a picture; yet there are innumerable others to recompense, intrigue and fascinate them.