Pitchford Hall

rdf:langString Pitchford Hall

rdf:langString Pitchford Hall is a large Grade I listed Tudor country house in the village of Pitchford, Shropshire, 6 miles south east of Shrewsbury. It was built c.1560 on the site of a medieval building and has been modified several times since, particularly in the 1870s and 1880s when it was substantially restored, remodelled and extended. It is a timber framed two-storey building with rendered red sandstone panels, a stone roof and brick chimneys. The floor plan is E-shaped round a courtyard to the south with a Victorian service wing to the west. There is also an orangery and walled garden in the grounds. A deer park established in 1638 was disparked in 1790. 100 metres north of the hall is a bitumen well, near a ford across the Row Brook, from which the village gets its name. The bitumen or pitch was once used for waterproofing the timbers of the house. A Tudor style tree-house sits in a large lime tree and is believed to be the oldest tree house in the world. The hall was sold by Caroline Colthurst, the owner of the Pitchford Estate, in 1992. It has, however, recently been reunited with the Pitchford Estate (28 September 2016) by Caroline's daughter, Rowena Colthurst and her husband James Nason. A stretch of the Roman Watling Street runs through the estate.