Hadley was a small, early seventeenth-century, timber-framed country house that found itself a part of the rapidly growing urban area of Telford and was demolished in circa 1965. The twentieth century had cruelly caught up with it although, in the 1920s, it was described as ‘interesting as having come down to us almost untouched by modern alterations or additions’.

The house was of two storeys and attics, with a main north-facing front of two broad gables with a central off-set doorway. Largely of close studded timber framing, the first floor windows had a pair of lozenge-centred, diamond-braced panels beneath them, whilst the front had a profusion of visible carpenter’s marks on it. A central stone chimney shaft stack rose from the roof, capped by slender brick shafts, whilst inside the staircase made its way through the floors around a central newel post.

Hadley had been a possession of William of Hadley and his wife, Lady Seburga, in the early twelfth century, passing by inheritance to their son, Alan (d. circa 1170) and granddaughter, Cecily who married Sir Roger Corbet of Tasley (d. circa 1204). Hadley passed by descent through the Corbets until, in 1548, Richard Corbet sold it to Sir Rowland Hill (d. 1516). Hill’s nephew, William Gratewood (d. circa 1583) then had a life interest before the estate passed to his sister Alice, the wife of Judge Reginald Corbet of Stoke. It then descended to their son Richard Corbet (d. 1621) of Chesthill Grange and then to his son, Sir John Corbet, 1st Bt (cr 1627, d. 1662). Either Sir John or his father would appear to have been the likely builders of the house, but the next generation of the family, Sir John Corbet 2nd Bt, sold the property in 1669.

The purchaser was William Roe (d. 1679) of Arleston and the Roe family continued to own Hadley until 1848 when it was sold to the Wolverhampton ironmaster G.B. Thorneycroft (d. 1851). Thorneycroft was also the owner of Hadley Park to the north, the three storey, three bay, brick late-Georgian house which probably occupies the site of a lodge in the former deer park of Hadley Manor and which now survives as a hotel. Hadley was later owned by Thorneycroft’s son Lt-Col Thomas Thorneycroft (d. 1903).