Bicton, to the west of Shrewsbury, was conveniently placed for the London to Holyhead road which divides and also serves as a line of demarcation between two of the capital mansions of this village. These two houses, Bicton Hall and Bicton House, had another architecturally significant neighbour property in the form of The Woodlands which, at one time, was part of the Bicton House property.

Bicton Hall

This is a double-pile, white-rendered building of two storeys and five bays, with the left-hand bay having tripartite windows at both ground and first floors and the front door set in a Greek Revival stone doorcase immediately to the right. Its west front appears early nineteenth century although the building has a much earlier core, whilst the house was formerly of three storeys – the top floor having been removed prior to 1964.

The property was owned by a Shrewsbury family, the Knights, in the sixteenth century, but by the end of the seventeenth century it had passed to Anne and Elizabeth Payne, the spinster daughters of Vincent Payne, a Shrewsbury corvisor. The Misses Payne sold Bicton Hall and its estate to Arthur Tonge of Shrewsbury, in 1694, for £275, and from the Tonges it passed to the Mucklestons.

With the death of John Muckleston, the Bicton estate was inherited by his daughter, Letitia. She was then still a minor and, at the age of eighteen, married Richard Jenkins. Jenkins was already the possessor of Hargrave on the Long Mountain and the Abbey House, in Shrewsbury, which he had inherited from his father, Thomas Jenkins (d. 1730) High Sheriff of Shropshire in 1729.

The Jenkins’ grandson, Richard Jenkins (d. 1797) married Harriet Constance Ravenscroft of Wrexham and appears to have undertaken improvements to the house and estate. Richard and Harriet’s eldest son – a further Richard Jenkins (1785–1853) – succeeded. Married to Helen Spottiswode, daughter of an East India Company servant, he himself had an important career in India. He had joined the Bombay Civil Service at the age of fifteen in 1800 and went on to serve as acting resident at the Court of Dowlur Rao-Scindia 1804–5, before becoming Resident at Nagpore in 1810–1827. From 1832–53 he was a director of the East India Company and, in 1839, he became its Chairman.