Sevenoaks
High Street
Many of old buildings still remain. John Wesley preached to 'a
large, wild company' on open ground near Sevenoaks School.
13, 15, 17
medieval hall house
152 Electric
Theatre Cinema. Built in 1911, by the proprietor of the Royal Oak Hotel on the
site of Smith's Brewery closed 1925. Rebuilt Tudoresque. Rebuilt again 1935 as
The Cinema plus cafe, etc. This was J Nye's second film theatre commission and done
for the Sevenoaks Cinema Company. 'Cinema'
was opened by Lord Sackville on 4
November 1935. A simple spare brick facade was treated as a symmetrical
composition relieved by a wide central window which lit a cafe on the first
floor. Further up on the frontage, a stone frieze carried the word ‘Cinema’, outlined in neon after dark, flanked
by low relief panels designed as variations on the masks of comedy and tragedy.
the interior was of restrained proportions with metal balustrades on the stair wells and a glazed
screen dividing off the café. In the streamlined auditorium, horizontals drew
the eye screenwards in the Mendelssohnian manner with the plaster firmament
illuminated by concealed installations above the proscenium and a 'flying
saucer' providing a central halo of light. An abstract pattern appliquéd in the
stage drapes and a glass organ console completed the effects. Nye designed the entire scheme himself. It
cost some £10,000 and provided 1,150 seats, representing excellent value even
in 1935. In 1936
became a Plaza, with a Compton organ installed and a Granada in 1947. Closed in
1960 and a road was built through the site
65 15th-century timber- framed building which was originally the residence of the Archbishop Reeve or his steward but was converted
into a shop in the 19th .
Banks at the beginning of
the modern shopping centre.
Chantry. red-brick stands right on
the street, rubbed
brick and blind windows on the wings. Staircase with turned balusters. Extension of 1905 on the
street side, but 17th garden walls,
one of which is dated 1686.
Jail was
furniture shop opposite the post office
Manor House, house of' 3 bays and fanlight over the front door. 1800 This 18th house is thought to
have been built as a dower house
for Knole. It is now part of Sevenoaks School
Market House 1843. Originally opened as an arcade.
Rendered with terracotta
Old Vicarage. Late 18th
Post Office
timber framed
Royal Oak Hotel. 1820. Plain,
Burlington’s school.
Royal Oak Tap. John Wesley a blacksmith who seized one of
the troublemakers, carried him off to his forge (now the tap-room of the Royal Oak in High Street) and
hung him by the belt from one of the hooks until the sermon ended.
Sevenoaks School.’ For the free education of poor
children’ - founded in 1432. The grammar school and almshouses were founded by
William Sevenoke, who became Lord Mayor of London in 1418, It was rebuilt 1724 by Lord Burlington. But local men were in charge – posh
architect would have insisted on something smoother. Grouped with almshouses in
long blocks. Modern buildings behind.
St.Nicholas church., St Nicholas is the patron saint of-
merchants and travellers and the position of the church, close to the roadside, suggests that it may have originally been a wayside shrine on the trade route from London to the sea. it seems originally to have been a daughter
church of Shoreham. There has been a
church on the site for over
1,000 years, initially wooden but replaced by stone in 11th, Present building is 13th
and 15th but restored.Battlements were added by Cockerill in 1812. Both John
and Charles Wesley preached here encountering
fierce opposition. Font and pulpit from Wrotham.
Stables 18th
end on to the road. .
Temple House, 1884 on a
grass mound.
The Red House. Built 1686 for John Couchman of
Tooting. Once the home of Jane Austen's uncle. Jane visited the house during her childhood.
Knole Park
Church, Access
from High Street
Deer enclosure by
Bourchier in 1456, taken over by Henry VIII. Elizabeth passed it to Sackville.
Deer are mixed fallow and Japanese Sika, 400 in 1973,
Surrounded by
stone wall a mile round. Bryan Donkin worked there at age of 20 as agent to
Duke of Dorset
Herb garden
Ice house domed
by the drive now filled in
Echo Mount, a
Knoll that gives the house its name. Landscape gardening in the trees
Duchess Walk.
Landscape painting going north-east to Godden Green. Loudon praised the old
formal garden then left it intact
Glass works
Knole
House. One of England's greatest show houses, set in a deer park Knole's historic links with kings, queens and
the nobility, as well as its literary connections with Vita Sackville-West and
Virginia Woolf, make this one of the most intriguing houses in England.
Thirteen state rooms are laid out much the same as they were in the 18th , to impress visitors by the wealth and status of the Sackville family.
The house contains paintings by Gainsborough, Van Dyck
and Reynolds, and 17th-tapestries.
Built by Thomas Bouchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1456. Henry VIII took
it from Cranmer and Elizabeth gave it to Sackville. 1604 major remodelling.
Looks the same now as it did when Sackville died. Built round three main
courtyards. A very large house with a lot of important
rooms and fittings. Wesley twice visited Knole, in 1780 and 1790. He wrote
rhapsodically of both house and grounds: 'The Park is the pleasantest I ever
saw; the trees are so elegantly disposed. The house, which is at least two
hundred years old, is immensely large. It consists of two squares, considerably
bigger than the two quadrangles in Lincoln College ... The pictures are
innumerable; I think, four times as many as in the Castle at Blenheim.' And he
was particularly impressed by the Spangle Bedroom, furnished for a visit of
James I. The first impression the
house makes is one of size. It is a great jumbled mass of buildings, roofs,
chimneys, and gables—looking more like a fortified town than a house for a
single family. Covers four acres and has seven courtyards, and is supposed to
have fifty-two staircases, and 365 rooms. Buildings existed in at least 1370,
and probably earlier, but it was transformed into a great house in 1456 for
£266 13s. 4d. The price may have been low as the previous owner's father, Lord
Saye, the Lord Treasurer, together with his son-in-law, the Sheriff of Kent,
were beheaded by Jack Cade in the Peasants' Revolt of 1450. Two weeks earlier
Cade's rebels had ambushed the royal troops on the edge of Knole Park, and
defeated them. Several archbishops
followed Bourchier until Henry VIII confiscated the house from Archbishop
Cranmer in 1538. After a period of confusion, the present family, the
Sackvilles, gained uncontested possession in 1603, and have remained at Knole
ever since. Entering the house by the main gate we pass through the Green Court
to the Stone Court, a large courtyard paved with stones over reservoirs of
water for the house. The attention to detail in the house is shown by the
leaden drainpipes, dated 1605, which are all different. The Great Hall, covered
with ornate wooden panelling and carving, is where the family would eat, with
an orchestra in the musicians' gallery. A special feature is the
original upholstery and coverings on the chairs and sofas—they are rather faded
and tatty but still lasting after three or four hundred years' use. The Ballroom is an immense room
with magnificent oak panelling with carvings of mermaids and grotesque figures,
and a plasterwork ceiling decorated with flowers and acorns. The Venetian
Ambassador's bedroom has a huge and sumptuous four-poster bed; the crimson
drawing- room has several Reynolds; and the Cartoon Gallery has copies of
Raphael cartoons on its red velvet-covered walls.
Stone Court reservoir
underneath. a quite magnificent feat of early architecture. Best described as a
pair of underwater cloisters, interlinked by beautiful archways along its whole
length, the water cistern is almost 70 feet long, twenty feet wide and ten feet
deep. The water in the reservoir was crystal clear, other than the silt
Pleasance, deer
park, landscape garden, herb garden.
Old Oak.
King John’s Oak
King’s Beech
London Road
20 The house where Wesley is said to have stayed, became a
butcher's shop
Market
Square
Market House built to replace a timber
Tudor building. Originally
the ground floor arcade was open
and provided covered space for market stalls and the upper rooms were used as a corn market and the coroner's court
Six Bells
Lane
Curving
cobbled lane. Church bell tower gave it its name.
Sevenoaks
The oldest
and most interesting part south of the railway station. Pleasantly situated
500 feet up on the greensand ridge, with fine views over the Weald
Tonbridge Road
White Hart White
Hart Inn. Beyond it are said to be the seven oaks. Road soon reaches its
highest point
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