Another hot sunny day and you don’t fancy busy roads, crowds and queues for everything? Helen Geraghty and her daughters, 11 and eight, headed for National Trust property Knole, at Sevenoaks.

Out there somewhere, thousands of people are sitting in traffic jams for the coast, but not us, because we’re chilling out in the shade of a big leafy oak tree at medieval deer park, Knole.

There are 1,000 acres of lush hilltop grounds at this property which boasts “five centuries of showing off to visitors”.

It’s funny because it’s never been the “showing off” bit of Knole that I’ve liked. Yes, its dimly lit and delicate interior is home to stacks of exquisite and fragile furniture, silver, textiles and paintings, gathered by archbishops, monarchs and latterly the Sackville family.

But if all you actually want is some shade from the skin-scorching sun and some peace and quiet while the kids run around, Knole has more than enough of that to go around, too.

Under the oaks, beech and chestnuts you can watch nearly tame fallow and sika deer pass just feet away.

There are baby deer learning to walk and baby birds learning to fly. There are steep hills, great for rolling down and tall trees and gnarled old stumps, all great for climbing up.

We found the remnants of an old ice house, preserved near the front gate of the house and we wandered for miles, led on by hopes of spotting more deer, frequently getting lost and finding ourselves again.

And when you think you’ve exhausted all the possibilities there are also huge areas of lime green sprouting ferns, great fun to let the kids walk half way through – and then yell at them that there could be snakes.

Back at the main house – with its 13 impressive state rooms, priceless portraits and tapestries – an up-to-date visitor centre opened recently with touchscreens and an interactive model. Here you’ll learn as much as you want to know about the house, first built as an archbishop’s palace, and the deer park.

For example, Knole was home to author Vita Sackville-West and was where she wandered as a child. It became the inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. Not to mention that the grounds were the location for the promotional film for the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever.

Conservation of this long and varied history is in evidence as you arrive at the visitor centre; it is accessed via an orangery, once used for all manner of untoward storage, now once again a home to pretty lemon trees and sculptures.

The archives record that the house itself has provoked some extreme reactions. Henry VIII liked it so much that he forced Thomas Cranmer, his Archbishop of Canterbury, to hand it to him in 1538.

Yet the following century the diarist John Evelyn was so depressed by the greyness of this “greate old fashion’d house” that he hurried out into the sunshine.

Seventeenth century diarist or not, if you trip in to the tearoom early for lunch you can all sneak in a breakfast-menu sausage in a roll, with ketchup, before most people start to show for lunch. And you can be on your tub of posh National Trust ice cream even before the eerie echoing bell on the Knole clocktower rings noon.

That night supercool Rebecca, 11, of her own free will, said: “Thanks for taking us to Knole, mum. I thought it was going to be rubbish, but it was brilliant.”

It’s enough to make you choke on your cocoa.

It is £4 to park in the car park at Knole.

Tickets to the house are £10.40 adults, £5.20 children. Family ticket available.

During the summer the house opens from noon to 4pm but is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

The visitor centre and tearoom open from 10.30am to 5pm, but are closed on Mondays.

Cars can enter the grounds during these opening times. The grounds are open daily for pedestrians.