The name Benthall derives from the Anglo-Saxon for field overgrown with bent grass, and a variety of different spellings have been applied to the eponymous family that has been seated at Benthall – albeit with a break in their tenure – since at least the twelfth century. In 1283, the estate passed to Lord-Chancellor Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose main Shropshire seat was at Acton Burnell (q.v.). A relative of the Lord-Chancellor, John Burnell, married Margery Benthall, the daughter of Roger Benthall and co-heiress of her uncle Philip de Benthall and, succeeding to the Benthall estate, their descendants assumed the Benthall name.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the early house may have occupied the same site as the present building. This, though, with its handsome, gabled sandstone south front, framed and crowned by great moulded brick chimney-stacks, and with a pair of polygonal bay windows, asymmetrically framing the rectangular porch tower to the right of the façade, appears to date – for the most part – from the late sixteenth century.

Although a date of 1535 was once suggested, the style of the frontage and another conjectured date of 1583 make the latter seem much more likely as the time of building and suggest that it was the work of Lawrence Benthall (d. 1603). A tablet on the south front bears the initials ‘BLK’, referring to the older Lawrence’s nephew, another Lawrence (d. 1652) and his wife Katherine Benthall – the owners from 1623 to 1652 – thereby commemorating further works.

The late sixteenth-century Benthall family were recusant and it has been suggested that the quincunx arrangement of tablets which are to be found on the porch – and are also to be seen at Madeley Court and Boscobel – allude to the five wounds of Christ. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the house possesses a hiding place said to have been for the concealment of Mass vessels.

The interior of Benthall has a well preserved sequence of rooms which retain the decorative features of an early seventeenth-century rebuilding. The entrance hall’s overmantel is of circa 1630, handsomely carved to display the arms of Benthall impaled with those of Cassy and Giffard.

The dining room, east of the hall, retains its seventeenth-century oak panelling which glows golden brown, having been stripped of white paint in 1935.