Knole House. Knole is a country house 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. Vita Sackville-West, who grew up there, recounts a legend that it is a calendar house: its seven courtyards correspond to the days of the week, its fifty-two staircases to the weeks of the year, its three hundred and sixty-five rooms to the days of the year, but 'I do not know that anyone has ever troubled to verify it. The meticulous planning of a calendar house certainly does not fit well with the organic growth and reconstruction of the house over more than 500 years. 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. It is currently undergoing an extensive conservation project, 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. Knole is located at the southern end of Sevenoaks, in the Weald of west Kent. To the north, the land slopes down to the Darenth valley and the narrow fertile pays of Holmesdale, at the foot of the North Downs. The land around Sevenoaks itself has sandy soils, with woodland that was used in the Middle Ages in the traditional Wealden way, for pannage, rough pasture and timber. The Knole estate is located on well-drained soils of the Lower Greensand. It was close enough to London to allow easy access for owners who were involved with affairs of state and it was on sounde, parfaite, holesome grounde, in the words of Henry VIII. It also had a plentiful supply of spring water. The knoll of land in front of the house gives it a sheltered position. The wooded nature of the landscape could provide not only timber but also grazing for the meat needs of a grand household. Moreover, it made an excellent deer park, being emparked before the end of the 15th century. The dry valley between the house and the settlement of Sevenoaks also makes a natural deer course, for a combined race and hunt between two dogs and fallow deer. The earliest recorded owner of the core of the estate, in the 1290s, was Robert de Knole. However, nothing is known of any property he had on the estate. Two other families, the Grovehursts and the Ashburnhams, are known to have held the estate in succession until the 1360s, and the manor of Knole is first mentioned in 1364. In 1419, the estate, which then spread over 800 acres, had been bought by Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, and, by 1429, he had extended it to 1500 acres. The estate remained in the hands of the Langley family, it seems, until the mid-1440s when it had been acquired by James Fiennes, first Lord Say and Sele. The circumstances of this transfer are not known, but it is clear that Lord Saye was also enlarging the estate by further, sometimes forcible, purchases of adjoining parcels of land. For example, in 1448 one Reginald Peckham was forced to sell land at Seal to Saye on threat of death. Forcible land transfers recur in the later history of the house, including that between archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII. Lord Saye and Sele seems to have begun a building project at Knole, but it was incomplete by his death in 1450. His ruthless exploitation of his powerful position in Kent was a motivating factor in the Jack Cade Rebellion; The lord was executed on the authority of a hastily-assembled commission initiated by Henry VI in response to the demands of Cade's rebels when they arrived in London. James Fiennes' heir, William, second baron Saye and Sele, sold the property for 400 marks in 1456 to Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. He already had a substantial property in the area, Otford Palace, but the drier, healthier site of Knole attracted him. Bourchier probably began building work by making substantial renovations of an existing house. Between 1456 and 1486, Bourchier and his bailiff for the Otford bailiwick, John Grymesdyche, oversaw substantial building work on the current house. The remodelled house must have been suitable for the archbishop by 1459, when he first stayed there, but he based himself there increasingly in his later years, particularly after 1480, when, at the age of about 69, he appointed a suffragan. In 1480, Bourchier gave the house to the See of Canterbury.