Dothill was originally owned by the Horton family who were recorded there in circa 1400. Alice, the daughter of Robert Horton married, in 1431, to William Steventon and carried the estate into that family with whom it remained for six generations. William, the son of John Steventon and husband of Sara Dawes, is recorded as rebuilding the house and a date stone was noted by H.E. Forrest in 1924, on the southern gable – it bore the date 1628 and William’s initials. The exact appearance of the building at that time is unknown, although an estate map in 1626 indicates a large and irregular house occupying the north-west angle of a rectangular moat within which paths, in the form of a cross, divide a garden of rectangular beds or lawns. The house, prior to the alterations two years hence, is shown as having three gables and a two-storeyed gabled porch, with what appears to be a full height projecting bay to the right – perhaps the bay window of a great hall. Most interestingly on the map, to the east of the house is what appears to be a pair of treehouse arbours set in a single tree, perhaps a little like the single remaining example at Pitchford (q.v.)

William and Sara Steventon had eight daughters and a son, John, who married Mary, the daughter of Sir Richard Newport (later 1st Baron Newport) of High Ercall in 1642. Mary, after her John’s death, had married Francis Forester (1623–1684) of Watling Street. With the demise of her son from her first marriage, Richard Steventon (d. 1659), Dothill was left initially to Mary Forester and then to Richard Steventon’s half-brother – Mary and Francis Forester’s son – William Forester (1655–1718).

William, in 1680, married Lady Mary Cecil, the third daughter of James, 3rd Earl of Salisbury of Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, whose sister, Lady Mildred, was also married to a Shropshire landowner, being Lady Corbett of Longnor (q.v.). William Forester accompanied William III on his arrival into England and was, as a consequence, created a Knight of the Order of the Bath in 1689. He was appointed as Clerk of the Green Cloth in 1689 and retained this position, with its responsibility for organising royal journeys, until the year prior to his death in 1718.