page_title: Knole
section_title: House
hierarchical_section_title: Knole / Art and architecture / House
caption_attribution_description: English: View through main gateway at Knole House, Sevenoaks, taken on a foggy morning, 12.4.2018
context_page_description: Knole is a country house and former archbishop's palace situated within Knole Park, a 1,000-acre park located immediately to the south-east of Sevenoaks in west Kent. The house apparently ranks in the top five of England's largest houses, under any measure used, occupying a total of four acres.
  The current house dates back to the mid-15th century, with major additions in the 16th and, particularly, the early 17th centuries. Its grade I listing reflects its mix of late-medieval to Stuart structures and particularly its central façade and state rooms. In 2019 an extensive conservation project, "Inspired by Knole", was completed to restore and develop the structures of the buildings and thus help to conserve its important collections. The surrounding deer park has also survived with varying degrees of management in the 400 years since 1600.
context_section_description: Although its complex history reveals Knole to have been the result of many periods of development, its national importance is primarily for its 17th-century structure.  As Newton puts it:
  Knole is neither sublime nor picturesque.  It is, however, especially in the distant view, authentic, looking almost exactly now as it did in the year Thomas Sackville died... .  No English great house but Haddon has managed to remain motionless like this since the early-seventeenth century, balanced between growth and decay.
  At the time of Sackville's rebuilding, little notice was taken of his work.  It was not at the forefront of architectural development and, in 1673, John Evelyn called it '‘a great old fashioned house', quite unlike the classical style favoured by Inigo Jones and also illustrated by Thomas Howard, the first earl of Suffolk's almost contemporary rebuilding of Audley End.  Knole may no longer look much like Bourchier's late-medieval house, but it can still give the impression of a sombre, squat, complex of houses, not least thanks to its use of the dark Kentish ragstone.  However, Town asserts its importance, arguing that 'what Sackville achieved at Knole was a remarkable synthesis of what was inherited from the existing fabric and what was newly built.'  He had taken a great, late-medieval house for a series of archbishops of Canterbury, usually among the most powerful men in the state, which had already experienced other changes of function and occupancy during the sixteenth century, and made it a Jacobean country house. Sackville recommended the "very excellent surveyor" John Thorpe to survey and make "plots" in 1605 for the rebuilding of Ampthill for Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry, and may have employed him on his own building projects. 
  Beyond the Jacobean facade, plentiful evidence still exists of the earlier house.  One of the main surviving elements is the northern range of Stone Court. The upper floors contain a series of high-status apartments, and these are demonstrated by a number of structural features, such as the series of large garderobe towers protruding on the north side and the cellars below, which contain some late-15th-century wall paintings.
  In 2013, Knole was granted £7.75m. by the Heritage Lottery Fund for conservation and repair work to the House.  As part of this work, in 2014, archaeologists found that the late-medieval wall and roof timbers, and the oak beams beneath floors, particularly near fireplaces, had been scorched and carved with scratched marks.  Initial media coverage focused on these being apotropaic marks, or "witch marks", to prevent witches and demons from coming down the chimney.  This is one of a series of possible interpretations of such marks, which are now being found increasingly on medieval and renaissance building across England, including at Sissinghurst.  However, all interpretations suggest they were apotropaic rituals to ward off fire damage or evil spirits.  Since many of these are late-medieval marks, covered up during the early-17th century rebuilding of Knole, it is fanciful to link them to James I's interest in witchcraft, particularly since, after the publication of his book Daemonologie (1597), he later became much more sceptical about the existence of witches.
caption: Main Gateway, April 2018
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