The unusually named village of Ruyton-XI-Towns was so called from its medieval significance, when eleven townships were incorporated within a single manor. In addition to Ruyton Hall, the village also has two other significant estates within its vicinity: Ruyton Park (now usually known as Packwood Haugh from the preparatory school that occupies it) and also Ruyton Manor.

Ruyton Hall

For 400 years, Ruyton was the seat of a branch of the Kynaston family and their descendants. Freeholders in a manor held consecutively by the largely absentee landlords of the le Stranges, the Yongues, the Earls of Craven and of Powis, the Kynastons took an interest in the running of the one-time borough of Ruyton XI Towns, Richard Kynaston presenting the Mace in 1540. Their former seat, on the edge of the village presents a complicated architectural presence which archaeological investigations of the structure would, perhaps, help to unravel. A broad, blind pointed arched recess in what is now a corridor on the first floor suggests late medieval work. However, in the late sixteenth century a major rebuilding in half-timbering was effected by Thomas Kynaston, whose initials with those of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Lee of Langley, and the date 1574, are carved at the centre of vine trails on a tie-beam which is now concealed by a later wing and is visible in the attics. This beam is on the west wing of the house, facing north towards the road, and may well have been an attempt to balance the existing north front of the house. With the current evidence to hand, little more can be said of this work, except that the tie-beam’s standard of carving is high, the vine trails reminiscent of those at Pitchford Hall.

In the mid seventeenth century the marriage of the Ruyton heiress, Jane Kynaston, to William Kinaston of Lee, near Ellesmere, brought about a subtle change to the spelling of the patronymic, whilst their son William (d. 1749) – later Recorder of Shrewsbury – built the plain three-bay brick stable range, to the east of the Hall, which bears his initials and the date 1705. William the younger was appointed a Master in Chancery under Lord Chancellor Macclesfield in 1721 and was implicated in a financial mismanagement case; in Ruyton, as a consequence, he gained the unfortunate nickname of Heavy Bill.