Coton had been given by Roger de Montgomery to Shrewsbury Abbey, at the time of the Norman Conquest, and remained with the Abbey until Henry II revoked the property in favour of Guy le Strange. Under le Strange, the Astley family were resident at Coton and in the mid fourteenth century the estate was owned by Sir Thomas Astley. In 1353 Sir Thomas added a chantry chapel (now the south aisle) at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Alveley, in addition to having a private chapel at Coton.

His descendant, Margaret Astley, inherited Coton in 1376 and she married Robert de la Lee, the son of Thomas Lee of Roden. The Lees were a branch of the family seated at Langley and at Lea (q.v.), on occasion claiming to be the senior line, and they remained the estate’s owners until the early nineteenth century. A junior branch, the progeny of Richard Lee (bapt. 1563) emigrated to America in the seventeenth century. This line went on to settle in Virginia and were ancestors of several prominent American leaders including General Robert E. Lee.

In 1713, Eldred Lancelot Lee (1650–1734) made a late marriage to 23-year-old Isabella (1690–1767), the daughter of Sir Henry Gough of Perry Hall, who ultimately produced eleven children. It was probably he who commissioned a rebuilding of Coton at this time which included both the house and stables – the latter still surviving to the north-east in its early eighteenth-century guise. The resultant Coton Hall, however, was illustrated in the Alveley Survey of 1730 and 1777, showing an early eighteenth-century south front. This has a central block of three storeys and five bays below a balustraded parapet and bound by regular rusticated quoins, whilst the windows have moulded surrounds and stepped aprons. The first floor window is flanked by scrolls above the Corinthian columns beside the doorway. With the window’s aprons, this recalls the north front of Hardwick Hall (q.v.) and the lost elevations of nearby Himley Hall, Worcestershire. To each side of this centre block are adjoining wings, each of two storeys and two bays, whilst, to the left, what appears to be a gabled west front trails out of sight in the perspective of the drawing.