page_title: Knole
section_title: Knole since 1700
hierarchical_section_title: Knole / History / Knole since 1700
caption_attribution_description: Studio portrait presented by Esther Cloudman Dunn to the Smith College Library.
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: Lionel Sackville was a key supporter of the Hanoverian Succession and was rewarded by George I with the Garter in 1714 and the dukedom of Dorset in 1720.  In 1730, Sir Robert Walpole appointed him lord lieutenant of Ireland.  Much later, in 1757, he was attacked in Knole Park by a mob protesting against the Militia Bill.  However, he was saved by the arrival of a small cavalry force and died peacefully in Knole House in 1765.  His wife, Elizabeth, had been a maid of honour to Queen Anne.  Her great friend, Lady Betty Germain(e), lived at Knole for such a long time that her bedroom, sitting room and china closet are, to this day, named after her.
  Lionel's son, Charles, 2nd duke of Dorset, only survived his father by four years, but his grandson the 3rd Duke, was a much more significant character for Knole.  An avid collector with the means to satisfy his acquisitiveness, he not only brought back various old masters from his Grand Tour in 1770, but also became a discerning patron for contemporary artists. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted a full-length portrait and the duke also acquired several other paintings by Reynolds, eleven of which are still on display in the Reynolds Room.
  John Frederick's only son, George, the fourth duke, died in 1815 at 21, and Knole was then left by the 3rd Duke's widow in 1825 to their daughter Mary, Countess of Plymouth. She died childless in 1864, leaving it to her sister Countess De La Warr and her heirs male. It ultimately passed to the latter's fourth son, Mortimer Sackville-West, 1st Baron Sackville and thence to his successors.  However, lord Sackville's resources were insufficient to maintain the house and its possessions.  He began selling a number of the heirlooms to enable him to keep the estate going.
  The Sackville-West descendants included writer Vita Sackville-West.  Her Knole and the Sackvilles, published 1922, is regarded as a classic in the literature of English country houses.  Its rather romantic style is sometimes of dubious historical accuracy but it is based upon full access to the manuscripts and books at that time in the House's collection, though many are now in the Kent County Archives (originally at the Centre for Kentish Studies; hence CKS in some catalogue records, and now at the Kent History and Library Centre) in Maidstone.
  It was soon after this book's publication, in December 1922, that Vita first met Virginia Woolf who, became a friend and, for a while in the later 1920s, her lover.  Woolf wrote Orlando over the winter of 1927–8, an experimental, though accessible, novel which drew on the history of the house and Sackville-West's ancestors, particularly as presented in Vita's book. The Sackville family custom of following the Salic rules of primogeniture was to prevent Vita from inheriting Knole upon the death of her father Lionel (1867–1928), the 3rd Lord Sackville. As she was not philoprogenitive, this was as well, but the thought hung heavily on her at this time.  Woolf gave her a fantastical version of Knole and, when Vita had read it, she wrote to Virginia, 'You made me cry with your passages about Knole, you wretch.'  This sentiment may be heightened by the uses of Vita as a historical model for some of the photos in the original Hogarth edition.  Three of these are, in fact, adapted from pictures at Knole: 'Orlando as a boy' from the young Edward Sackville in the double portrait; 'Archduchess Harriet' from a picture of Mary, fourth countess of Somerset in Lord Sackville's private collection and 'Orlando as Ambassador' from a portrait of Lionel Sackville, the first duke of Dorset by Rosalba Carriera.  On her father's death in 1928, the house and estate went to Lionel's younger brother, Charles (1870–1962).  However, if Vita had to leave Knole, Orlando remained; the original manuscript of what Vita's son, Nigel Nicolson called, 'the longest and most charming love-letter in literature' is there.  It is perhaps fairer to see it as a work of consolation to Vita, though it is one that also contains a number of barbed comments about Knole and the Sackvilles, with i
caption: Vita Sackville-West, in 1926
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