In 1490 the de Berhams sold the manor of Sissinghurst to Thomas Baker of Cranbrook. The Bakers were cloth producers and in the following century, through marriage and careers at court and in the law, Thomas's successors greatly expanded their wealth and their estates in Kent and Sussex. In the 1530s Sir John Baker, one of Henry VIII's Privy Councillors, built a new brick gatehouse, the current West Range. In 1554 Sir John's daughter Cecily married Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, creating the earliest connection between the Sackville family and the house. Sir John's son Richard undertook a massive prodigy expansion in the 1560s. The Tower is part of that expansion, and formed the entrance to a very large courtyard house, of which the South Cottage and some walls are the only other remaining fragments. Sir Richard surrounded the mansion with an enclosed deer park and in August 1573 entertained Queen Elizabeth I at Sissinghurst.