Summary
A modest, minor gentry brick house, of two storeys and three bays, it bears a date escutcheon of 1714 with the initials ‘EIK’. The initials are those of Edward Kynaston, who succeeded Thomas Kynaston (d. 1710), Mayor of Oswestry in 1709. Thomas’s wife – and the mother of Edward – was Margaret, daughter of Robert Hill of Tern (now Attingham, q.v.) who with her five sisters received a significant legacy in lieu of the Tern Estate from her uncle, the Hon. Richard Hill of Hawkstone, when Tern passed to Thomas Hill. It was probably this legacy which funded the building of the house at Maesbury.
Only the exterior shell remains of the early eighteenth-century house, with much of the present interior being the result of a significant refenestration in the early years of the nineteenth century. These works included the handsome single storey semicircular Doric portico that now sits at the centre of the south front, and also the dog-leg staircase with stick balusters.
A wooded drive formerly approached the house, across a lane, from the north-west, to give the house a greater sense of setting. By the early nineteenth century, Maesbury was the house of John Franks, who also owned and operated the nearby corn mill, but, by the end of the century, the house and mill were owned by the Peate family who still remain at the house.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 420Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021