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A stone lobby under the oriel window divides the Green Court from the Stone Court. In summer the great oak doors of this second gate-house are left open, and it has sometimes happened that I have found a stag in the banqueting hall, puzzled but still dignified, strayed in from the park since no barrier checked him.

It becomes impossible, after passing through the formality of the two first quadrangles, to follow the ramblings of the house geographically. They are so involved that, after a lifetime of familiarity, I still catch myself pausing to think out the shortest route from one room to another. Four acres of building is no mean matter.

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Into the very early mediaeval history of the house I do not think that I need enter. It is suggested that a Roman building once occupied the site, and that some foundations which were recently unearthed beneath the larder—evidently one of the oldest portions—once formed part of that construction. The question of dating the existing buildings, however, is quite sufficiently complicated without going back to a building which no longer exists. Nor do I think that the early owners—the Pembrokes, or the Say and Seles—offer the smallest interest; if we knew precisely what parts of the house we owed to them severally it would be another matter, but the mediaeval records are very scanty. It is safe to say, generally speaking, that the north side is the oldest side; it is the most sombre, the most massive, and the most irregular; there are buttresses, battlements, and towers, but no gables and no embellishments—nothing but solid masonry. Up in the north-east corner is the old kitchen, and the old entrances through dark archways at the top of stairways. The passages here, of thick stone, twist oddly, and their ceilings are groined by semi-arches which have become lost and embedded in the alterations to the stone-work. It is a dark, massive, little-visited corner, this nucleus of Knole.