About
Knole House is one of the largest and most significant historic houses in England, a vast medieval palace set within a 1,000-acre deer park in the heart of Sevenoaks, Kent. The house covers an area of more than four acres, with 365 rooms (one for each day of the year, according to tradition), 52 staircases, and seven courtyards — one for each day of the week. This extraordinary architectural complex was originally built as a medieval archbishop's palace and later given by Henry VIII to his cousin Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne Boleyn.
Knole passed into the ownership of the Sackville family in 1566, where it has remained ever since, making it one of the few great houses still closely associated with a single aristocratic family across five centuries. The house is jointly managed by the National Trust and the Sackville family (the Earls and Barons Sackville), offering a rare glimpse into genuinely lived-in aristocratic history. The poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, who grew up at Knole, immortalised it in her novel 'The Edwardians' and it inspired Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
The house contains one of England's finest collections of original furniture, including the spectacular 17th-century state bed and suite of silver furniture that remain among the most significant pieces of their kind. The attic rooms preserve an extraordinary cache of domestic textiles and objects spanning centuries. Visitors explore the show rooms through a carefully curated circuit revealing the house's many layers of history, from Tudor state rooms to Jacobean grandeur and later family life. The surrounding deer park, ancient in origin and home to a large herd of fallow and sika deer, is freely accessible to walkers and provides a magnificent setting for a day out in the Garden of England.
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Annual Visitors (2019)
150,000
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Wednesday, Thursday
Busiest: Saturday, Sunday
💡 Weekday mornings in spring or autumn for the quietest visit; deer park best at dawn and dusk for deer viewing
💡 Visitor Tips
- The deer park is free to enter and accessible year-round — a wonderful walk even when the house is closed in winter.
- National Trust members enter the house free — consider buying membership if you plan to visit multiple National Trust properties.
- Timed entry tickets are recommended for the house interior in summer — book online to avoid disappointment.
- Allow at least half a day for a thorough visit to both the house and deer park.
- Sevenoaks station is only a 20-minute walk from Knole — the train from London Bridge takes about 30 minutes.
- Wear comfortable shoes — the deer park is extensive and some paths can be muddy in wet weather.
- The audio guide significantly enhances the house visit, providing detailed information about the rooms and collections.
- Look out for the free room guides (National Trust volunteers) stationed in the show rooms — they have fascinating stories about specific objects.
Highlights
The Show Rooms and State Apartments
Knole's show rooms present one of the most complete sequences of 17th-century interiors in England, preserved almost entirely in their original state. The Brown Gallery, Cartoon Gallery, and King's Room retain their original furnishings including tapestries, portraits, and furniture that have stood in place for over 300 years.
The Spangled Bedroom, with its remarkable 17th-century state bed hung with silver and silk spangles, is among the most spectacular rooms in any English house.
The preservation of these rooms has been so complete that Knole offers a uniquely authentic experience of grand aristocratic domesticity spanning four centuries.
The Silver Furniture Collection
Knole possesses one of the most important collections of 17th-century silver furniture in the world — perhaps the finest outside a royal collection. The suite includes silver mirrors, tables, torchères (candle stands), and candlesticks that would have formed a glittering display in the apartments of Charles II's court.
These extraordinarily rare pieces came to Knole as gifts from the king to Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset.
The survival of such a complete and high-quality suite is remarkable, and the pieces are considered national treasures of the first order. They are displayed in the King's Bedroom, giving a sense of Restoration-era royal magnificence.
Vita Sackville-West and Literary Connections
Knole was the birthplace and childhood home of the poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, one of the most celebrated writers of the early 20th century. Her passionate love for the house, which she could not inherit due to the laws of male succession, permeates her writing. Her novel 'The Edwardians' (1930) is set at a house closely based on Knole, while Virginia Woolf wrote 'Orlando' (1928) as a love letter to Vita partly inspired by Knole's history.
The literary and Bloomsbury Group connections add a rich cultural dimension to a house already heavy with historical significance. Selected rooms display items relating to Vita and her family.
The Deer Park
Knole's 1,000-acre medieval deer park is one of the largest in private ownership in England and is freely accessible to walkers every day of the year. The park has been home to herds of fallow and sika deer since the medieval period, and today the deer roam freely among ancient oaks and open grassland in a landscape that has changed little in centuries.
The park is particularly atmospheric at dawn and dusk when the deer gather and the ancient trees cast long shadows.
Beyond the deer, the park is rich in wildlife and provides exceptional walking through a landscape of genuine historical significance. The park is thought to have inspired the Forest of Arden in Shakespeare's 'As You Like It'.
Collections
Knole holds one of the most significant collections of 17th-century furniture and textiles in the world, much of it in situ where it has stood for over three centuries. The silver furniture suite presented by Charles II is of international importance. Paintings include portraits by Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Lely alongside family portraits spanning five centuries.
The house's attic collections of stored domestic objects represent an unparalleled record of household material culture from the Tudor period onwards. The collections are jointly managed by the National Trust and the Sackville family.
State Rooms Circuit
Self-guided tour through the show rooms and state apartments including the King's Bedroom with silver furniture and the Spangled Bedroom
📍 Main house
Attics Conservation Displays
Displays relating to the major conservation project cataloguing Knole's vast attic collections
📍 Attic rooms
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.