Shifnal Manor

In 1635, Shifnal Manor, which occupied a south-facing spur of land a mile south-east of Shifnal town centre, was a complex, multi-phase quadrangular building arranged around a courtyard. The house looked southwards onto a formal, walled garden with parterres featuring low clipped box hedges. Beyond the garden was a formal canal and a wilderness. At the centre of the gardens was a heart-shaped pond, an emblem of the Catholic sympathies of either the Earl of Shrewsbury, or his successor Anne Dacre, the Dowager Countess of Arundel. In the centre of the south wall of the garden stood a gazebo. The gazebo, along with stretches of associated terrace walks and steps, still survives. The two-storey gazebo is octagonal, and built of brick with sandstone ashlar dressings. It has a tile ogee roof with a lead finial.

Also surviving, at least as earthworks, are some of the pools, ponds, and channels which lay both along the stream bordering the site to the east and west, and which lay below the formal garden.

At the time of the 1635 survey, Shifnal Manor lay within a park. However, it appears that it was difficult to manage even from early on. In 1597, the Earl of Shrewsbury's steward complained that 'the deer die in this park at this present and so soon as they be dead the poor folks [of Shifnal] carry them to the town and eat them.' Seven years later, parts of the park were being farmed, and over 50 of the herd of 250 had died from lack of feed. The pale was also rotting, and poachers were rife. Full disparkment had apparently taken place by 1752, as it is not on Rocque's map of Shropshire of that date.