I returned to Kent to visit Sevenoaks, a fairly typical commuter town of 30,000 people. To be honest, the town itself isn't the most interesting part, it's rather similar to most towns in southern England. There's a high street, a shopping complex, and the main road slicing its way through the town. I'm not going to dwell on that in this post, there's no need to. Instead, I'll skip to the good bit, that's where all the history is anyway.
Knole Park
What most commuter towns don't have is a 1,000-acre large deer park, partly owned by the National Trust and formerly a royal hunting ground.
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| Sloping park |
Knole Park is absolutely wonderful, and it's easy to lose yourself in its vast expanse. It's Kent's last medieval deer park, in fact, everyone seems to love saying that. And it's true - there are about 350 deer in total, either fallow or Sika deer.
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| Deer hinding underneath a tree |
It's not hard spotting deer, they're not kept behind fences and they're allowed to roam free. That also means you can come right up close to them, but the National Trust would rather you didn't. After all, if you stick around a fawn for too long, it won't want to be around its mother anymore. There's also a risk of getting ticks, so it's probably best if you don't stroke or feed them.
If you're wondering how many deer I saw, it was mostly does. There was the odd fawn, as well as one stag, his antlers still prominent, but when I tried to photograph him, he slunk off. This is the best I got of him:
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| He's shy |
That said, I really wanted a cool photo of a deer, and I managed to get one. This is a doe I spotted underneath a tree, which started to walk right up to me. As it got closer, I panicked and headed off, but not before I got this portrait.
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| She's cute |
Another large section of the park has been given up to a golf course. It's the kind where you can just stroll through and no one will mind, even if the signs encourage you to stick to the footpaths. You can easily get lost wandering around the park, but you'll inevitably be near a golfer. And probably some deer.
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| Does resting by a path |
And maybe the large estate in the middle of it all.
Knole House
The National Trust are only in control of a small fragment of the park, but it happens to be the coolest bit. This is Knole House, formerly owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, before being bought by the Sackville family. It's one of the largest houses in England, spanning four acres of land, and the Sackvilles still live here to this day.
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| Knole House front |
There's been a manor house here since 1250, but Knole House as we know it came about when James Fiennes, a nobleman living in the mid-15th century, started constructing a house here. Fiennes was later convicted of treason, and the house was sold to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1456. It briefly became a royal residence during the reign of King Henry VIII, with the future Mary I staying here whilst Henry was busy divorcing his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Come 1603, though, it was bought by Thomas Sackville, and the house has remained Sackville land since then.
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| Under scaffolding... |
There's one Sackville in particular the National Trust focus on, though. Writer and music critic Edward Sackville-West lived here between 1926 and 1940, specifically in the Gatehouse Tower. He frequently had esteemed literary guests known as the Bloomsbury Group visit him at Knole House, with the most famous being probably Virginia Woolf. She also happened to be in love with Edward's cousin, Vita, who, along with Knole itself, was the inspiration for her book Orlando.
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| Gramophone with classical music, which Edward loved |
You can visit the tower to this day...for a price. However, at £5.25 to see just the tower, I'm not sure if it was worth it. There are two rooms - Edward's bedroom and his music room, and even though both are rather interesting, they're not £5.25 interesting. There are some interesting exhibitions and books you can read, even a gramophone, also a roof where you can view all of Knole, but I skimmed through most of them really quickly; I doubt I missed out on anything even then.
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| The Orangery |
Also, £5.25 doesn't get you that far. It's only the cost for the tower and a few other rooms, such as the Orangery. If you want to see the whole of the house, expect to pay up £16.60 to walk around the showrooms. Not that those are the only ways you can pay the National Trust - they have cafes, a bookshop, even the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio, which was closed when I visited. That's where you can watch conservators working, by the way.
On the whole, visiting Knole House left me a bit underwhelming, I'll admit that. The house itself looks wonderful, but the touristy part leaves lots to be desired.
Now, let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields. No, really.
The Beatles
By 1967, the Beatles, arguably the biggest band in the world, had decided they were no longer going to tour or play on TV. They still wanted to show off to fans, though, so they decided to release promotional films for two new singles: Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. These films were some of the earliest examples of music videos, a medium which most musicians would soon grow to love.
They chose to film these videos in Knole Park of all places, which is pretty ironic since both songs were based on actual locations from their hometown of Liverpool. Filming occurred in what is now the golf course. Strawberry Fields Forever's video was centred on a tree, whereas Penny Lane's was based around a stone arch a few yards away.
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| Some tree next to a stump. Probably not the one John Lennon meant. |
The tree no longer stands, it's long been reduced to a stump. Actually, the tree was already dead when they filmed the video, and was cut down years later. I followed a Google Maps landmark, thinking I'd find the stump, but quickly realised the map might not be the most accurate. I also wasn't going to wander around Knole Park looking for a single stump, so gave up.
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| The Penny Lane arch. Paul McCartney had some foresight filming his single here. |
The arch, however, that's still around, and it looks teriffic. It's situated by the Bird House, initially a Gothic summerhouse but now merely a gamekeeper's cottage. I'm guessing the arch was therefore purely decorative; actually, it's definitely decorative nowadays, too. The arch is completely surrounded by a fence, the same one the Beatles rode through on horseback in the Penny Lane video.
The Beatles connection doesn't stop there, though - out in the town centre, John Lennon found a circus poster which he later used to pen the lyrics to "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite". I didn't know about this at the time, though, so don't have any photos of the antique shop where Lennon saw the poster. You can read more about the Beatles over here, if you're into them. I certainly wasn't intending to make a mini-pilgrimage when I visited.
The seven oaks of Sevenoaks
That said, I couldn't possibly write this post without mentioning the oaks in Sevenoaks. That said, I'm not entirely sure where the oaks even are. Wikipedia says the oaks refer to the trees in Knole Park, but then it also goes on to mention the planting of seven oak trees in 1902 at the Vine cricket ground in honour of Edward VII's coronation. That's where I went in the end to look at some oaks.
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| This is not seven oaks |
The Vine is one of the oldest cricket grounds in England, with its earliest use being in 1734 for a test match between Kent and Sussex. Kent used to play test matches here until 1851 - the women's side continued until 1973 - and nowadays, it's mainly used by the local Sevenoaks team. However, it's also the site of the seven oaks in Sevenoaks.
Except that's not really true, because six of those oaks were destroyed in a storm in 1987. Therefore, it was decided to plant seven new oaks in place of them; these were then vandalised, and replaced with more mature saplings. Therefore, there are eight oaks in Sevenoaks.
Epilogue
There's nothing much else to say about Sevenoaks, to be honest. The rest of the town centre, as I mentioned earlier, is pretty dull, and I didn't spend too long walking around there. Instead, all I did was walk back to the train station and head back home. I will say, though - Knole Park is absolutely beautiful, and I'm glad I visited when I did. It happened to be the last day of summer, before it started raining again, making me incredibly lucky to visit Sevenoaks when I did.
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| The typical station... |
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| ...a few minutes from the typical high street. |
By the way, it's about time it starts raining again. Do you see how bloody dry the grass looks in these pictures?
And if you want to know how people live just three miles away, check out my post on Otford and Dunton Green.
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