Knole

I pulled this information about Knole off of Wikipedia- "Knole is an English country house in the town of Sevenoaks in west Kent, surrounded by a 1,000-acre deer park. One of England's largest houses, it is reputed to be a calendar house, having 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards." We weren't able to tour through it because it is closed until March, but the grounds were worth the 7 mile drive :) This is one of the most amazing places I have been in the sense that there are actual deer that are tame roaming around you. It is a little freaky. The house has a lot of strange superstition surrounding it about people loving it madly and growing to hate it. King Henry VIII made the Archbishop who owned the house give it to him since the King loved it so much. The house definitely has an allurement and was built between 1456-1486.

Willie John enjoying Knole from a different perspective. This seemed to be the only way that we could keep him from trolling about the country side.

This would be Adessa being rebuked by her father for not listening and feeding the deer leaves, which we were asked not to do. This also caused the deer to keep creeping uncomfortably close to us, which Adessa loved. Of course she loved it, she has never seen anyone get pummelled by a deer before! I personally didn't want to be the one attacked and burned into her memory (I couldn't afford the therapy). I also didn't want she or her brother to be charged, I figured John could whip the deers booty ;)

John and I were both crazy in love with this tree and marvelled over how old it must be. I decided that they chose to build the house around the tree.......it is an amazing tree.

I loved this door knocker on the front doors of Knole. Adessa had a hay day knocking away on it, and yes it does in fact work.

I was scared to death by how close this buck kept creeping toward me. I remembered my friends story of Yellowstone where an elk or a moose charged at one of their mom's. Aaaagh, I don't want to have that rack tearing through my flesh! Sooo I kept scooting back as this very hammy and photogenic buck followed me around.

Adessa loves to climb tree's. She was super thrilled that there was a "perfect tree climbing tree" there seemingly just for her. She wasted no time and got right busy climbing away.

William in time-out for pitching a fit where he lost his shoe (we had no idea where) and was now unable to run around. Don't you start feeling bad for him, I already did and let him run around through cold wet mud and deer poop anyway. John wasn't thrilled that I caved, but come on, who wouldn't want to be able to run around this place?

This place is incredibly scenic and has many areas for beautiful walks, strolls, and runs. While we were there we saw loads of family's out for a stroll, runners zipping all over the green hillside, and the occasional person just meandering alone enjoying how beautiful and quiet (with the exception of William's shrill screams) this Estate was.

After Church on Sunday the Nursery leader told us that William has a "Will" about him. She said that when he gets in his mind that he is going to do something or that there is something that he wants, he won't stop until he does or gets it. Hmmmm, where could this little bloke have gotten that from? Weird.