High Ercall is now a house that is hard to read. It remains a sizeable gabled property of brick with stone quoins, set close to the parish church of St Michael but, aside from its mullioned windows, is a largely featureless piece of architecture, owing largely to its dramatic Civil War past and also due to its life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a tenanted house.

The stone from which the house is built is said to have come from Viroconium at Wroxeter and, indeed, the site of the ancient Roman city came to the Newports of High Ercall following the marriage of Sir Richard Newport (d. 1570) to Margaret Bromley (d. 1598), the heiress of Eyton-on-Severn (q.v.). The Newport family are thought to have purchased High Ercall in the late fourteenth century and some of the earliest evidence of the family being seated there relates to Thomas Newport and his wife, Isabel, who procured a licence from the Bishop of Lichfield in 1398 for divine service in their oratories. Thomas Newport was probably the High Sheriff of Shropshire of that name in 1404 and his grandson, William (d. circa 1491), who was Sheriff in 1473, increased the family’s standing and estates by his marriage to Elizabeth, one of the four daughters and co-heirs of Sir John Burgh.

Sir Richard Newport (d. 1570) not only brought additional lands to the family, through his marriage to Margaret Bromley, but served as High Sheriff of Shropshire in 1552 and was a Member of the Council of the Welsh Marches. Their son, Sir Francis (d. 1623), who succeeded on his father’s death, was also High Sheriff of Shropshire, in 1586, and he was married to Beatrix, the daughter of Rowland Lacon of Willey. Sir Francis had a long reign at High Ercall and rebuilt his seat there and also at Eyton. The house, on its central northern gable, still has an inscribed stone tablet that proclaims him as the builder in 1608, whilst a garden wall has a further tablet which records his works between 14th March 1617 and 13th October 1620.