Summary
Wootton’s nineteenth-century demolition makes it an old loss, but one to be lamented if Mrs Stackhouse Acton’s illustrations are to be considered accurate. It was an early seventeenth-century moated house that had been built by 1634, and Mrs Stackhouse Acton shows it to have had handsome shaped gables that were not unlike those of Great Lyth (q.v.). A turret to the left of the entrance side, with a small lancet window at first-floor level, suggested earlier origins, although the great serried ranks of rusticated chimneys gave the house a picturesque and almost Vanbrughian silhouette.
Wootton was the property of the Earl of Lindsey in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, and was sold, in 1673, to William, first Earl of Craven. Its tenant in the latter part of the seventeenth century was Richard Walker (d. 1666/7), whose father had purchased nearby Ferney Hall (q.v.) in 1656. The Walker family had been ironmasters since the late sixteenth century and Richard Walker is recorded having also rented ‘the mines of cole and iron-stone on Clee hille’ and the Bringewood Forge. His son, Job (d. 1712), who inherited Ferney, seems to have remained at Wootton, although Job’s son, Francis Walker, removed to Ferney Hall in 1715.
After just over a century of use as a farmhouse, Wootton was demolished circa 1840. Mrs Stackhouse Acton, having witnessed this act of destruction, must have been additionally galvanised in her resolve to save Stokesay Castle (q.v.), which was also a property of the absentee Lord Craven.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 710 - 711Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021