HYLAND
published in 1922; in it she described Knole as "above
all an English home." In a 2010 article in The Guardian,
author Miranda Seymour
describes Vita's paean
as an "intense, romantic
hymn to the home that she
unappeasably adored."
It is likely that Knole, one of
England's top three largest
houses, was at some point
a calendar house, with
365 rooms, 52 staircases,
12 entrances and 7
courtyards; the number
of rooms is approximately
correct, but the staircases
are fewer today. There
are other richly symbolic
visual elements at Knole,
which will be mentioned
in this article. Knole is
listed Grade I, a hybrid of
Elizabethan to late Stuart
structures, and its contents
include furnishings that are among the rarest treasures in
Great Britain, including a solid silver dressing table with
matching mirror and candlesticks, probably survivors
from the collection of solid silver furniture commissioned
by Louis XVI, nearly all of it melted down to finance
the Sun King's military campaigns at the end of the
seventeenth century.
Originally a medieval manor house, Knole was rebuilt as
