History

From Medieval times, the site was a freehold, part of the Manor of Lewes Borough. On it, in 1526, stood the Vine Inn. That year John and Joan Mason gained possession from Thomas Scarse and Robert Saxby, after proceedings in the court of Star Chamber at Westminster. In 1577 the Innkeeper porch initialed and dated, still survives. The contemporary Inn Sign, a grossly nude Bacchas astride a barrel hung with Grapes, is also preserved at Anne of Cleves Museum.

Trading presumably ceased in 1588, when Pelland sold the property to Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, who was cousin of Queen Elizabeth Buckhurst’s principal mansion in Lewes, though, was the Lord’s Place, a residence created from the Priory’s domestic buildings at Southover. So he probably left his house. His descendants, created Earls of Dorset, in 1604, certainly lived here. Richard Amhurst Sergeant in Law was a tenant in 1626, and later Sir Thomas Woddcote. 

The Fourth Earl of Dorset eventually sold in 1633 to Henry Shelley, a Lewes based landowner, whose descendants lived here till 1854. Most of the eldest sons were called Henry. In 1763, to mark the century of their purchase, the family pulled down the back wall and built on the fine Georgian rooms at the same time inserted sash windows in the street front and remodelled the interior. A Tudor shield of arms exhibiting the family quartering, now in the hall, must have come from another house.  

Besides being an MP for Lewes, the last Henry Shelley, who died in 1811, was an inveterate host. When Dr Samuel Johnson visited, one of his little daughters became rather a nuisance with her questions, so the Doctor lifted her into a Cherry tree and walked off. At dinner some time later, the child was missed, and a search party was about to set out when the Doctor exclaimed, “Oh I left her in the tree”. In 1786, the Prince of Wales (later Prince Regent, and the George IV), stayed here whilst his now famous Pavilion at Brighton was being built.  

Cordelia, the last of Henry Shelley’s unmarried daughters, died in 1854. During the Census of 1841, when the collector checked the return of the household, he noticed that the ages of the two surviving Miss Shelleys and their three female domestic servants were all stated to be twenty-five years. It is understood that when challenged, Cordelia indignantly said that she “had never in her life met with such impudence to ask the age of a lady”. All females in her household were unmarried, and should not think of putting each down as more than twenty-five.

From 1847 to 1875 John Hodgkin, a barrister and Quaker Preacher, rented the house. His eldest daughter, Mariabell married Edward Fry, son of the chocolate manufacturer, and another, Elizabeth, became the wife of Alfred Waterhouse, a distinguished architect, who helped redesign the gardens here.  

During the First World War, the house was used as a military hospital for officers. After the war, the house was converted for a short time into two flats, and in 1932 it became a hotel. A new wing was soon built and the hotel remained privately owned until 1977.

Following a period of corporate ownership, The Shelleys returned to private ownership in 2003.