Caughley is today a name best known for the ceramics that were produced on the estate during the ownership of Edward Browne (d. 1751) and his wife Jane (d. 1779). The factory, like the Browne family’s house, Caughley Hall, has long-since disappeared. A lease of the factory had been taken in 1754 by Ambrose Gallimore, and he, from about 1772, was joined by Thomas Turner (1749–1809). Turner developed French-style wares at Caughley, where the factory was employing around a hundred workers by 1793. Turner’s Francophile tastes were made manifest in Caughley Place, the now-lost house that he had built for himself by 1795 to the north-east of the factory. This was reputedly designed by a French employee and had a south-facing front of two storeys with a higher central bowed projection that was crowned by a mansard gable. Turner sold the lease and business in 1799 to the Coalport China Works owners, Edward Blakeway and Richard and John Rose who initially maintained the factory. By 1821 production had been transferred to Coalport and both the factory and Caughley Place had been demolished. Only the so-called Round House, a generous two-bay, two-storeyed brick house of square plan, with central chimney stack and reeded brick quoins still stands on the south side of the Caughley Road, suggesting the quality of the lost buildings.

The Caughley Hall estate itself had been a possession of Much Wenlock Priory and, at the Dissolution, its core was bought by a Bristol merchant, Thomas Lokier, who a year later, in 1541, sold it to its tenant, John Munslow. The property passed through the hands of the Bentley, Dudley, Onslow and Owen families until it was purchased, in 1586, by John Dawes (d. 1595) of Shrewsbury. Dawes’ grandson, John Dawes (d. 1680) eventually inherited and his daughter and heiress, Margaret, conveyed the estate to the Browne family through her marriage to Ralph Browne. The Brownes’ son, another Ralph (d. 1707), was Sheriff of Shropshire in 1687 and married Catherine, the only child and eventual heiress of Edward Benthall of Benthall (q.v.). The Brownes built a new house on the estate in circa 1680.