THE village of East Knoyle sits on a slope of greensand above the Blackmore Vale near Shaftesbury. Its villagers are proud of its most famous inhabitant, Sir Christopher Wren, whose father was the rector of the parish when the future architect of St Paul’s was born in 1632. Attached to the Georgian façade of the elegant rectory that we see today is an older building and it is there that Christopher lived as a child, although a fire shortly before his birth that destroyed part of the building meant he was actually born in a nearby cottage. When he was eight, his father, by then Dean of Windsor, moved his family to join him in Berkshire.
A walk around the woodland at Knoyle with Hervé was an education
The rectory was sold off by the Salisbury Diocese in 1935 and, in due course, became known as Knoyle Place. In 1992, it was bought by Comte and Comtesse Hervé Le Bault de ‘Plena’) on the edge of the woodland garden, whereas the Fisons planted the stately row of magnolias and many of the rhododendrons on the hillside behind the house.
