Boscobel is now better known than its parent-house of White Ladies as a result of the hunting lodge having provided refuge to Charles II in 1651, after he had fled the Battle of Worcester. There, the monarch was given a place of safety, both within the house and in the boughs of the oak tree in its grounds – the now celebrated Royal Oak, of which the present tree is a descendant.

Boscobel takes its name from the Italian for beautiful, or fair, wood, since it was originally at the heart of a hunting forest. It was built as a hunting lodge for John, the eldest son of Edward Giffard of White Ladies. Its naming came about in circa 1630 when John Giffard had invited guests to the newly-built lodge and Sir Basil Brooke of Madeley Court (q.v.) is said to have proffered the name of Boscobel. At the time of Charles II’s concealment, it was occupied by Charles Giffard’s staff, the Pendrill family.

The principal estate house of White Ladies has been largely eclipsed by Boscobel’s eventful royal role and yet this now-lost house had its own important history. Formerly the Augustinian Priory of St Leonard at Brewood, founded prior to 1186, the place gained its name from the white habits worn by its nuns. Ruins of their late twelfth-century church are still to be seen within a rectangular enclosure, but the great timber-framed house that may have developed out of the prioress’ lodging has long gone. This was shown, together with the roofless church ruin, in Wenceslas Hollar’s Boscobel engraving of 1660, depicted as a gabled block with a long, close studded wing to the left. The top floor of the wing was shown with windows running along its length, suggesting a long gallery within. Around the house was a walled enclosure that was entered via a gabled timbered gatehouse. Although the gatehouse is no more, the enclosure remains and was used for Catholic burials throughout the eighteenth century and until 1844.