Buildwas Abbey was originally founded as a house of the Savignac Order by Roger de Clinton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in 1135. The Abbey of Our Lady and St Chad became Cistercian, through the merging of the Orders, in 1147.

Following the Dissolution, Buildwas was granted in July 1539 to Edward Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Powis (c. 1503–1551 or 1559). He and his wife, Anne, daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, converted the former Abbot’s House, to the south of the former church, as a private residence. The chapel, ambulatory and former dining hall were adapted for secular living and the hall was embellished with a plasterwork ceiling by the same team that worked at Belswardine and at Wilderhope. Grey’s illegitimate son, also called Edward Grey, was living there in 1557.

Buildwas was sold in 1637 to Thomas, Lord Ellesmere, father of John 1st Earl of Bridgewater, who sold the place on to Sir William Acton, 1st Bt in 1648. Sir William died just three years later and much of his estate was inherited by his only daughter who had married Sir Thomas Whitmore, Bt of Apley Park (q.v.). Buildwas Abbey, though, was left to his nephew William, the third son of Sir Edward Acton 1st Bt of Aldenham (q.v.).

William Acton had an only daughter and heiress, Jane, who married Walter Moseley (d. 1712) of The Mere, Enville, Staffordshire, and their son, Acton Moseley (d. 1745) was the first of the Moseley family to live at Buildwas. Married to Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Herbert Croft Bt, the couple’s eldest son, Walter Acton Moseley (d. 1793) served as High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1757. Walter Acton Moseley added to the family’s lands at Buildwas with the purchase of the neighbouring West Coppice Estate.

West Coppice had been a seat of the Lacons, illegitimate scions of the main Lacon lines at Willey and Kinlet.