Knole and the Sackvilles by Vita Sackville-West, copyright 1949 (non-fiction)

There were cricket professionals as early as the eighteenth century. Knole House in Sevenoaks, Kent had one or two on the staff. They have long gone but the cricket square is still there in the grounds at Knole. The grounds are undulating meadowland in a park with great old trees and a smarter garden close to the house. On one visit there with family by car (my family, not the Sackvilles) we had trouble keeping the deer from eating our sandwiches. You go for a quiet day out and this is what happens!

The panorama of Sackvilles, Earls, then Dukes, of Dorset is centuries wide so the family tree at the front of the book is needed often. The history of the house starts in the 13th century, and the history of the Sackvilles there began in the 16th when Queen Elizabeth gifted it to her Treasurer Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst whom she made the first Earl of Dorset...with a house in Kent! Sevenoaks was closer to the office than Buckhurst in the Weald, the family's home. Thomas must also have sighed with relief when the Queen held court at Eltham or Greenwich rather than Westminster as it was also an easier commute.

The joy of the book is in the detail such as the names and jobs
of the staff in 1613 when Richard Sackville was the Earl and John Avery was Usher of the Hall, Edward Small was Groom of the Wardrobe, and Rawlinson was the Armourer. There are more than a hundred names and functions listed and they reveal a lot about the life of the place. The number of people living in and around the house would be larger than the average village of the time. Their former workshops still cluster around the main house. There were even artisans to make drinking vessels; and there were twelve maids and married women to take their meals at the Laundry Maids' Table.

In the 1920s Vita Sackville-West had an affair with the writer, Virginia Woolf. The novel 'Orlando' by Woolf (1928) was dedicated to Sackville-West. The latter also had a strong attachment to her gardens at her home in Sissinghurst, now a National Trust property with family still resident the last time I was there.

A quick search on the internet easily found copies of this book around 6 Euros from UK booksellers. The same could be true for accounts of life in the great houses in many parts of the world. There is more interest in reading about the history of a building already know to you. I was drawn to this book because I happened to live in SE London for 13 years and its focus, Knole House, its park and its people was a breath of fresh air on an easy route out of the city.