263 - Woolstaston Hall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2023
Summary
Woolstaston is today but a shadow of its former self, having been reduced in circa 1784 to just the south wing of what was once an H-shaped mansion of the early 1670s. What one sees today is a two-storey house of brick with a hipped roof. Its south front has a brick plat-band which gives a sense of proportion between first and second floor, although the seven-bay façade is now disfigured by four-pane Victorian plate glass sashes which injure the details of this architectural fragment. Yet at the centre of the south elevation remains a doorcase with a flat-ended triangular pediment that is embraced by a pair of urns and the now sadly decayed carvings of heads and garlands on lintel and pilasters. This has a quality to its design, even if the carving of its execution is lacking, since the flat-ended triangular pediment recalls that at Aldenham (q.v.). Where the carvings are concerned, it is tempting to see the same hand that worked at Minsterley Church, Aldenham and Weston Park. At each of these sites, the names of Nicholas Needham and Thomas Dugdale have been suggested as craftsmen who were working under the architect William Taylor. There is no documentation to support this and yet the client for the house had strong court connections which would suggest a London designer. Around the corner from this front, on the east and then on part of the north side, the plat-band is in stone – the east front having been the original principal front of the house. Prior to its partial demolition, Woolstaston was a sizeable house which had 37 rooms in 1754. It had reputedly been surmounted by a balustraded parapet and had a gateway crowned by sculptures of lions.
Its builder was Roger Pope (d. 1710) who served as Equerry to Charles II. Pope had a successful racehorse called Diamond which won a 2,000 guinea prize at Wallasey. This reputedly funded a house in Bridgnorth’s Low Town. Pope named it Diamond Hall and crowned it with a cupola – the vane of which depicted horse and jockey. The Pope family had acquired Woolstaston in the sixteenth century, having already distinguished themselves as burgesses in Shrewsbury.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 709 - 710Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021