In the Middle Ages, Petton was the site of a moated manor house. The moat remains in the present park together with a medieval fishpond. This house was the seat of an eponymous family in the fourteenth century but, by the early sixteenth century, the manor house was home to Sir Peter Newton, an important member of the Council of the Marches and the builder of the Council House in Shrewsbury in 1502.

By the later sixteenth century, Petton had become the seat of the Chambre family whose male heirs ended with John Chambre. He had two daughters and co-heirs. In 1768, Mary, the younger daughter, married John Hill of Prees, later the third baronet of Hawkstone and father of the first Lord Hill. The elder daughter, Hannah married Edward Maurice, who took the name of Corbet upon his succession to the estates of Ynysmaengwyn, and proved a less than satisfactory husband. The major stumbling block to their union proved to be Anne Roberts, the dairy maid at Petton, with whom Corbet embarked upon an affair. The pair would rendezvous in a summer house at Petton that is no longer extant.

Thus, in 1785, Petton was sold to John Sparling (d. 1800), of St Domingo Hall, Liverpool. Sheriff of Lancashire in 1785, Sparling was a prominent Liverpool trader with business interests in Virginia in America, which included textiles and slaves. His son and successor at Petton, William Sparling, in turn, was Sheriff of Shropshire in 1809. William Sparling was known to have been parsimonious and saved money throughout his life, living to the remarkable age of ninety-four. He was succeeded, following his death in 1888, by his brother Rev. John Sparling whose daughter, Emma Florence, in 1867, married Captain Ellis Brooke Cunliffe of the 6th Dragoon Guards. She took Petton to that family after the Rev. John’s death at the age of seventy-five in 1890. The house at this time was a classical building that had probably been built by either John or William Sparling and was much in the manner of the small classical mansions designed by Thomas Harrison of Chester.