At the time of Sackville's rebuilding, little notice was taken of his work. It was not at the forefront of architectural development and, in 1673, John Evelyn called it '‘a great old fashioned house', quite unlike the classical style favoured by Inigo Jones and also illustrated by Thomas Howard, the first earl of Suffolk's almost contemporary rebuilding of Audley End. Knole may no longer look much like Bourchier's late-medieval house, but it can still give the impression of a sombre, squat, complex of houses, not least thanks to its use of the dark Kentish ragstone. However, Town asserts its importance, arguing that 'what Sackville achieved at Knole was a remarkable synthesis of what was inherited from the existing fabric and what was newly built.' He had taken a great, late-medieval house for a series of archbishops of Canterbury, usually among the most powerful men in the state, which had already experienced other changes of function and occupancy during the sixteenth century, and made it a Jacobean country house. Sackville recommended the "very excellent surveyor" John Thorpe to survey and make "plots" in 1605 for the rebuilding of Ampthill for Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry, and may have employed him on his own building projects.