91 - Eyton Hall, Eyton-Upon-the-Weald Moors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2023
Summary
The name Eyton is one which holds a justifiable degree of significance in Shropshire, especially on account of Rev. Robert William Eyton’s magisterial twelve-volume Antiquities of Shropshire. Rev. Eyton was the rector of Ryton, near Shifnal, and a grandson of Thomas Eyton of Eyton (d. 1816). The Eytons had been seated at their manor in the flat Weald – or Wild – Moors since early Medieval times and are possibly a cadet branch of the Norman house of Pantulf.
Royalists at the time of the Civil War, Sir Thomas Eyton (d. 1659) of Eyton, was listed in 1655 as having been compounded for £976.
Their seat at Eyton Hall, though exhibits little antiquity beyond the latter years of the eighteenth century and, indeed, the early house was on a site at the north end of the village, close to the church of St Catherine. The central three bay block – which until the late twentieth century was of two-and-a-half storeys – appears to have been built as a farmhouse and probably owes its construction to the aforementioned Thomas Eyton, who succeeded his father in 1776 and, in 1779, was, like many of his forebears, High Sheriff of Shropshire. Thomas was a banker and Receiver General and lived primarily in Wellington. His bank ran into financial trouble and he was declared bankrupt in 1816, with one correspondent writing in that year that: ‘all has been sold up but the family settled estate’.
The shame and the stigma attached to this was all too much for Thomas Eyton and, tragically, he committed suicide in 1816, causing a shock throughout the county and one which Charles Hulbert in 1837 still recalled.
His eldest son and namesake – who served as High Sheriff in 1840 and died 1855 – seems to have settled the family back at Eyton, adapting and adding to the building to create a five bay house prior to 1825. This Thomas Eyton’s son, Thomas Campbell Eyton (d. 1880) also made alterations to the house in circa 1834 prior to his marriage.
Thus the older block is now flanked by two storey bays beneath a continuous hipped roof. Embracing this are two storey blocks with full height canted bay windows with a rusticated ground floor; these elements are united across the façade of the older house by a single storey Tuscan colonnade.
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- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 242 - 244Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021