Madeley Court is a remarkable survival – a grand Tudor mansion which now stands within the boundaries of Telford new town and the setting of which bears witness to the close proximity of mineral and industrial wealth which were to be both the making and the near undoing of the house. The lake to the north and the undulations of the landscape that surround the house are not the legacy of some eighteenth-century park-maker, but rather a former furnace-pool and the slag-heaps of the long-gone Madeley Court Ironworks. That the house, which in 1899 was described as ‘a fine Elizabethan house fast falling into decay’ was not lost is something to be thankful for. It did, however, suffer from the decay, losing most of its internal decorations. Its rescue by Telford Development Corporation in 1973, which saw remedial repairs and consolidation works undertaken, and then its further restoration and conversion into a hotel have brought both salvation and new purpose.

Although today the house appears to be largely of the late sixteenth century, Madeley Court still retains remnants from its earlier past and there is still visible evidence of the former monastic grange that had belonged to Wenlock Priory, seemingly from the eighth century. The main body of the house is, in fact, on the site of a thirteenth century hall that had been built by the Prior of Wenlock, and archaeological investigations have established that there was an adjoining structure immediately to the south-west of the hall and a further building, which was probably a chapel, to the south. On the northern side of the present hall range, looking out to the former furnace pool, is still a two-light, square-headed window which is clearly of thirteenth-century date, evidenced by its mouldings, and which, indeed, matches the design of those still to be seen on the thirteenth-century Prior’s Lodge at Much Wenlock. The east range at Madeley, adjoining the hall wing, also has evidence of earlier origins being on a moulded stone plinth that is probably fifteenth century.