Dinthill, like Preston Montford, was a property of St Alkmund’s Church in Shrewsbury before the Norman Conquest, and it passed with that church to Lilleshall Abbey as an endowment upon its founding in the twelfth century. Upon the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Dinthill was granted, as a possession of Lilleshall Abbey, in 1543 to James Leveson.

The property, which in 1604 amounted to 604 acres of land, passed by descent in that family until, on the death of Sir Richard Leveson in 1605, it was inherited by his aunt, Mary, wife of Sir George Curzon of Croxall. Either Lady Curzon or her daughter, the Countess of Dorset, appear to have disposed of Dinthill to Thomas Owen (d. 1661), Town Clerk of Shrewsbury from 1609. Owen was the third son of the draper, Edward Owen of the Bellstone in Shrewsbury and his wife Joan, daughter of Richard Purcell of Dinthill, whose family had been tenants at Dinthill under the Levesons.

Thomas Owen is recorded making a settlement of property at Dinthill in 1614 and died there in 1661, having suffered the sequestration of his estates following the Civil Wars, between 1647 and 1655. Although he settled some of the Dinthill estate on his son Edward in 1633, it appears that his son predeceased him, so that Dinthill passed to a cousin, Leighton Owen of Braggington Hall (q.v.).

His daughter, Martha, and her husband Edward Griffiths of Old Marton are recorded living at Dinthill in the later seventeenth century, and it was their son Leighton Owen Griffiths who built the present house in the early 1730s. The finance for the project came from Griffith’s marriage to Anne, daughter of Robert Hill of Tern (now Attingham – q.v.) who, with each of her five sisters, was given a generous dowry by her uncle, the Hon. Richard Hill, in lieu of the Tern estate which passed to Robert Hill’s sister Margaret and her husband Thomas Harwood.

Leighton also owned Braggington and had a family interest in Preston Montford (q.v.), and it was at the latter that he and his wife Anne lived, from 1725 until 1733, during the building of the new house at Dinthill. The earlier house on the property, which incorporated parts of the monastic grange, was a timbered structure to the west of the present house.