Westhope Manor is the early twentieth-century realisation of a proper seat on an estate that had been owned by the Dyer family since the eighteenth century. It was designed by Guy Dawber, the later President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who exhibited two sets of drawings at the Royal Academy in 1902, shortly after its completion, on a virgin site.

The Manor of Westhope had historically been centred upon a house to the east of the church, and it had passed from Roger de Montgomery’s under-tenants, the de Say family, into the hands of the FitzAlans, Earls of Arundel until 1561, when it was acquired by the Crown. In 1568, Westhope was acquired by Leonard Dannett of Dannett’s Hall, Leicestershire, a member of a family who had lived on the estate under the Arundels. Leonard Dannett’s brother, Sir John succeeded him but, in 1655, the estate was sold in accordance with the will of his successor, Thomas Dannett, and the funds used to pay his debts.

Westhope was then purchased by Henry Fleming of the family associated with Shadwell (q.v.), and later with Sibdon Castle (q.v.). The estate remained in the hands of his family until it was inherited by Elizabeth Harries, the surviving sister of the murdered Edward Fleming (d. 1773), who passed on the property to Sir John Swinnerton Dyer, 6th Bt (1738–1801), in 1782. Sir John, who was Colonel Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, was of a family that originally hailed from Heytesbury in Wiltshire and his ancestor, Sir William Dyer, 1st Bt (1621–1680), had been a successful barrister. Married to Susannah, daughter of Henry Vicary of Windsor, he was succeeded in his estates by his son, Sir Thomas Swinnerton Dyer, 7th Bt (1768–1838), and, with his death, Westhope was left to his wife, Elizabeth Standerwicke, Lady Dyer (d. 1864).

The widow remarried, in the year after Sir Thomas’s death, to Baron von Zandt (d. 1842), Chamberlain to the King of Bavaria. The attractions of his Seehof Castle at Bamburg, Bavaria, are likely to have called more of her attentions in her brief window of ownership than the rural Shropshire estate.