Belswardine was long the seat of the Harnage family who came into the property by purchase from Sir John Dudley in Henry VIII’s reign. The family had supposedly originated from the nearby hamlet of Harnage and claimed descent from Richard de Harnage who was living in the mid fourteenth century. His grandson, Hugh Harnage, served as High Sheriff of Shropshire in 1424 and was also MP for Bridgnorth in 1402 and 1419. Hugh’s son and namesake married Margery, the daughter of Sir Richard Lacon of Willey (q.v.) and it was their son, Thomas Harnage, who made the purchase of Belswardine in 1542. He is said to have commenced the building of the house in the following year.

Of the present H-plan house – which supposedly succeeded a house on a nearby moated site – the original mansion of Thomas Harnage appears to be the southern part of the centre range and the eastern-most end of the southern cross-wing. The whole of the northern cross-wing and the western end of the southern cross-wing are now the result of later rebuildings, partly supposedly due to a fire. The current brick exterior encases what was almost certainly an early sixteenth-century timber-framed house.

Thomas Harnage’s successor, Francis, who inherited in 1584, made two good marriages: firstly in 1560 to Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Mainwaring of Ightfield; and secondly, in 1582, to Grace, the daughter of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton, Staffordshire. It was probably Francis who, following his second marriage, further enhanced Belswardine, with the rebuilding of the southern cross-wing in brick, giving it two massive projecting chimneystacks on the south-west front of the house, which flank the present entrance. These have blue brick diapering and are crowned by star-plan stacks, which have partly been rebuilt. Inside, the south-west room of this range still retains its contemporary decoration of the 1584–1599 period, with a ceiling that is of the same school of plastering that effected works at Buildwas Abbey, Plaish, Morville, Wilderhope, Easthope Manor House and the gatehouse at Upton Cressett.

At Belswardine, as at these other houses, the plasterwork is employed to compartmentalise the ceiling, with thin ribs and the same motifs, although here the ceiling is now truncated since the room was reduced in size, probably in the early nineteenth century when the south-west entrance was created.