The Calendar House

February 5, 2025 at 8:00 am · Filed under england, international travel, tourism, travel and tagged: knole calendar house, short reads, travel writing

By Linda Tancs

A calendar house is a form of house dictated by the calendar. The principle of the calendar house is that the number of external doors, windows or panes of glass, chimneys, staircases or other elements should total four (the number of seasons), seven (days in a week), 12 (months in a year) or 365 (days in a year). Dating to around the Elizabethan era, the first such house is Knole in Kent, built after Elizabeth I’s death by one of her courtiers, Thomas Sackville (1st Earl of Dorset). The calendar in this case is represented through the 365 rooms, 52 staircases and seven courtyards. Once an archbishop’s palace, King Henry VIII liked it so much that he forced his archbishop to hand it over to him. Now owned by the National Trust, the Sackville family still occupies a portion of the estate, where you’ll find a medieval deer park and showrooms featuring textiles, paintings and a world class collection of Royal Stuart furniture.

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