THE GREEN COURT: BOURCHIER’S ORIEL
The “great chamber” referred to here was in all probability the present Great Hall, which we know to have been built by Bourchier about 1460, although it was altered by Thomas Sackville, who put in the present ceiling, panelling, and oak screen. Thomas also built the Great Staircase in 1604–8, leading to the Ball-room, which is of the time of Bourchier. I expect this is the “seler” referred to, meaning solar and not cellar, as might be thought; or did it mean the present colonnade, which is also of Bourchier’s building, in 1468? The position of the “new tower” is nowhere specified, but I wonder whether it is not the tower beside the chapel, where there is a stone fireplace bearing Bourchier’s cognisance—the double knot—and the same device in a small pane of stained glass in the window. This tower, moreover, goes commonly by the name of Bourchier’s Tower.
There are a few more items mentioned in the Lambeth papers, 1468–9: “Repairs at Knole. Repairs at one house set aside for the slaughter of sheep and other [animals?] for the use of the Lord’s great house at Sevenoaks, 113s. 2d.” This, I think, is certainly the old slaughter-house which forms one side of the Queen’s Court. It is obviously a very old building. But there is one point in this account which is of interest, namely, that Knole should at this date have been referred to as the “great house.” This would seem to prove that the greater mass of the building was already in existence, since by the latter half of the fifteenth century there were already many houses and palaces in England whose bulk would argue that the current standard of greatness might be high and the adjective not too readily applied. The Primate owned, moreover, up to the time of the Reformation no less than twelve palaces and houses of residence in the diocese of Canterbury alone, namely, Bekesburn, Ford, Maidstone, Charing, Saltwood, Aldington, Wingham, Wrotham, Tenterden, Knole, Otford, and Canterbury. It seems, therefore, unlikely that Knole should be singled out as a “great house” unless there were good justification for the expression.
Bourchier also built the Brown Gallery about 1460, and at or about the same date he put up the machicolations over the gate-house between the Green Court and the Stone Court. Towards the end of the same century, Morton, his successor, “threw out an oriel window which rendered the machicolations useless, and showed that all idea of such fortifications was at an end.” It is not known precisely how much Morton built at Knole. It is even uncertain whether he or Bourchier built the Chapel. The Lambeth records cease with some small repairs in 1487–88, so we have nothing to go upon—all the more pity, for Morton was a great prelate, forgotten now in the greater fame of the Tudor dynasty, “his name buried,” says his chronicler, “under his own creation.” This cardinal, having succeeded Bourchier in 1486, held the Primacy for fourteen years, and died at Knole in 1500. I pass over his successors, Dean and Wareham, for I do not know how much they did at Knole. Cranmer, the next archbishop, enjoyed the house for seven years only, when he was compelled—quite amicably, but nevertheless compelled—to present it to Henry VIII, whose fancy it had taken. Here the accounts begin again,[[1]] although they give very little indication: £872 by Royal Warrant in 1543, £770 in 1548, £80 in 1546—three sums which would now be equivalent, roughly, to £30,000.
After Henry VIII Knole continued as Crown property, passing now and then temporarily into the hands of various favourites, until in 1586 it was given by Queen Elizabeth to her cousin, Thomas Sackville, and has remained in the possession of his family ever since.
§ iv
The main block, therefore, meanders from Henry VII through Henry VIII to Elizabeth and James I: that is to say, roughly, from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth. There may be earlier out-buildings and later excrescences, but it is safe to say that the greater portion was built in the reigns of the Tudors. It is all of the same Kentish rag, with the exception of a row of gables which have been plastered over, and which were probably once of the beam-and-plaster fashion so prevalent at that date in Kent. With this exception the walls are of the grey stone, in many places ten and twelve feet thick, cool in summer, and, for some reason, not particularly warm in winter. The rooms are, for the most part, rather small and rather low; they break out, of course, now into galleries, now into a ball-room, now into a banqueting-hall, but the majority of them are small, friendly rooms—not intimidating; some people might even think them poky, relative to the size of the house. I do not think that they are poky. They are eminently rooms intended to be lived in, and not merely admired, though no doubt a practical consideration was present in the problem of heating to determine their size. Yet from an old diary preserved at Knole, and from which in its place I shall have the opportunity to give extracts, it is clear that in the early seventeenth century at all events the life of the house was carried on largely in one or the other of the long galleries. Now, none of the galleries has more than one fireplace. It must have been very cold. The old braziers that could be carried about the room as occasion required still stand in the rooms where they were used, and so do the copper warming-pans, shining and perforated, which were thrust into the beds to warm them before the arrival of the occupant. The principal beds, of course, must have been magnificently stuffy. They are four-posters, so tall as to reach from floor to ceiling, with stiff brocaded curtains that could completely enclose the sleeper. But on winter days I cannot believe that the group ever moved very far away from the fireplace or the brazier; and indeed, judging from the same diary, they seemed always to be “keeping their chamber” on account of coughs, colds, rheumatism, or ague when they were not keeping it because they were “sullen” with one another, or “brought to bed” of a son or a daughter.
§ v
The galleries are perhaps the most characteristic rooms in such a house.
