Fletcher Moss, visiting Lee prior to 1910, was captivated by the house: ‘One of the most charming old homes that any one could wish for...is the many-gabled, timber-built, little old hall at Lee near to Ellesmere’. Lee owes much of its charm to the organic way in which the house has grown. Forrest considered that the earlier part of the house had, in fact, been a two-storey cottage, onto which a grander front had been added to create a building that has a T-shaped ground plan. Certainly the northern section of the house is box framed, and probably of the early sixteenth century, supposedly built for an agent of the Earl of Bridgewater and Countess of Derby, Thomas Charlton. The Bridgewaters are themselves credited with the building of the northern part of the house, which makes a far greater play of show in its half-timbering, with struts forming lozenges in lozenges. This is understandably higher than the back portion of the house, with a handsome gabled and jettied projection to the north. To the left of this, the gabled, two-storeyed porch bears the date of 1594, whilst around the corner, to the east, is a close studded projection, the lower storey of which is open to create a passage way.

Inside, Lee continues to enchant with seventeenth-century panelled interiors and, in one of the rooms on the northern side, an arcade panelled overmantel, which bears the date of 1657. This has the initials of Stephen Hatchett (1616–1684) and his second wife, Elizabeth (d. 1677), the second generation of the Hatchetts to live at Lee. The property had been bought in 1634 by Stephen’s father, Richard Hatchett (1583–1654/5), a Shrewsbury burgess who had been born at Acton Reynald. He acquired not only the house and its land but also further property to the south, at Kenwick Wood, which he settled upon his son. The Hatchetts continued to be settled there for four generations from Stephen Hatchett, when Richard Bulkeley Hatchett (1720–1800) married, in 1748, Martha Owen (1713–1792), second daughter of Thomas Owen of Llynlloed, Montgomeryshire by his second wife, Abigail, daughter and co-heir of Rev. Hugh Owen of Bronyclydwe. Martha Hatchett inherited the Owen property at Tedsmore (q.v.) on the death of Hugh Owen MD in 1764 and was responsible for building the core of the house there.