[2][1] After her death in 1557, it was given back to the Crown,[3] but by the 1570s it was owned by Henry Poole, a former Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of Wootton Bassett, who had moved to Ditchling after his marriage.

[3] By the mid-19th century, the building was divided into cottages or tenements, but in 1936 it was restored to its original layout as a single house after being auctioned the previous year.

[3][2] In 1947 the property was purchased by the Mayor of Lewes, William (Bill) Ewart Witcher along with his wife Madeleine, the Mayoress.

[9] Writing in 1947, one author referred to it as "Anne of Cleves' House, or Wings Place as it was sometimes called in the past".

[10] Particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, local stories claimed the present building was much older than its 16th-century vintage: a former vicar of St Margaret's Church recalled residents telling him it was built by Alfred the Great or by William de Warenne's wife Gundrada[10] and when it was auctioned in 1894 the sale documents repeated the Alfred the Great myth.

[11] The house faces St Margaret's Church and is oriented north–south[2] on West Street, on which it is the only building to "[make] a major effect".

[5] There are projecting wings to the west and east, of which the latter has a brick entrance porch with an ogee-headed hood mould above an arch.

[2] The building is largely late-16th-century and is of timber frame construction filled with plasterwork, and with some brickwork and studding to the ground floor.