Following up our April lecture on the Sackville-Wests, we will visit two of the places most closely associated with them. Booking April and May
Our coach will take us first to Sissinghurst Castle to see the famous gardens created by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson. Dating from the Middle Ages and greatly enlarged in Elizabethan times, the house fell into ruin and was bought by Vita and Harold in 1930. They created the garden we see today. Laid out by Harold in a series of ‘rooms’ which were planted by Vita, it is perhaps the most famous garden in England and certainly one of the great gardens of the world. We shall have time to explore the gardens at our leisure and have lunch there. After lunch we will travel to Knole, where Vita Sackville-West was born in 1892 and brought up. She was married in the chapel at Knole. Dating from the C15th and once owned by Henry V111, it is one of England’s largest country houses. There is a popular legend that Knole may once have been a ‘calendar house’ with 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards. It has been the home of the Sackvilles since 1603 and the family continues to occupy parts of the house. Knole houses important collections of Stuart furniture, tapestries and portraits by English masters.