West Kent Country Houses
Wed 26 Feb 2025 10:00 AM - 4:15 PM GMT
Knole House, TN13 1HX
Description
Enjoy exclusive tours of two outstanding Grade I historic houses, each with fascinating histories.
Enjoy a private pre-public tour of magnificent Knole, a house that wears its centuries of history gracefully. From modest manor house to the home of Archbishops and royalty, the grand ancestral home of the Sackville family has stories of love affairs and literary connections to tell. The Grade I house is a remarkably preserved early Jacobean remodelling of a medieval archbishop's palace. From an even older manor house, it was built and extended by the Archbishops of Canterbury after 1456. During the Tudor dynasty it became a royal residence when Henry VIII hunted here and found it to be a good home for his daughter Mary I during his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. From 1603, Thomas Sackville made Knole the aristocratic treasure house for the Sackville family, who were prominent and influential in court circles. Knole's showrooms were designed to impress visitors and to display the family’s wealth and status. Over more than 400 years, his descendants rebuilt and then furnished Knole in three further bursts of activity.
Riverhill House
Later discover Riverhill House, a Grade II listed rag-stone Queen Anne manor house, originally built on the site of a Tudor farmstead in 1714. The estate was purchased in 1840 by John Rogers, a keen botanist and co-founder of the RHS, and a contemporary of Charles Darwin. In 2010 the House was the subject of a television documentary, Country House Rescue. Then enjoy an owner-guided tour of Grade I Nurstead Court, home to the Edmeades family for 400 years, a house with a rich history dating from the Saxon era. Nurstead is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry and mentioned in the Domesday book. The Court was built in 1320 by Stephan de Gravesend, Bishop of London, and extended in 1830. The Great Hall is one of England’s finest, rising 36 feet to the roof. In 1850 the house was refinished with Portland cement and Tudor-style gables added. A solar, or lord’s bedchamber, lies above the Great Hall, having acted as a bedchamber for 670 years. The interiors are a mixture of medieval timber with luxurious Victorian furnishings.
Tickets £85 including a two-course lunch at the George and Dragon Inn, Chipstead. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in February 2025
Note: non-NT members pay £16.00 for entry to Knole
Knole image © Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0 <;, via Wikimedia Commons
Location
Knole House, TN13 1HX