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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.

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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.