Vita was born in 1892 at Knole House and spent a happy childhood there until the death of her father in 1928 when she was 36. The family followed the usual English aristocratic inheritance customs, which prevented Vita from inheriting Knole Knole on the death of her father. The house followed the title, and was passed instead to her uncle Charles. In her own words, losing Knole nearly broke her heart.

A "calendar" house, Knole is reputed to have 365 rooms, 52 staircases (very few of them leading where you want to go, as Horace Walpole noted in 1752), 12 entrances and seven courtyards.