Knole

In the town of Sevenoaks, in the midst of a deer park, sits Knole, with its 365 rooms, home of the Sackville-West family. In olden times, their nickname was Fillsack: the house, chockful of family portraits and royal furniture, reeks of rapacity. Pile on the riches, for the greater glory of the family, it screams. Wood-paneled room after room, in dim daylight, the rain outside, the heavy steps of the ancestors echoing through the halls. Vita Sackville-West, the dispossessed heiress, loved it. I am more in sympathy with Eddie, the 5th Lord Sackville, novelist, critic, musician, confirmed bachelor and aesthete, who moved to Ireland in 1956: he told the Daily Mail: "Ireland suits my temperament. I prefer it to that big house in Kent".