Hodnet remains the home to the descendants of the family that first came to call this their seat at the time of the Norman invasion. These early owners – the de Hodynet, de Hodenet or de Hodnet family – would have known the castle, whose motte and earthworks still survive to the west of the present house. This, now the home of Sir Algernon and Lady Heber- Percy, presides, up on its terrace, above the spectacular gardens that were created by the late Brigadier Algernon George William Heber-Percy.

The de Hodnet heiress, Maude, daughter of Sir William de Hodnet, married Sir William de Ludlow of Stokesay Castle (q.v.) and so carried Hodnet to that family in the fourteenth century. Their great grandson, John de Ludlow, or de Lodelowe, was described as of Hodnet and Stokesay and he served as High Sheriff of Shropshire in 1379.

Two centuries later, John Ludlow’s heiresses, Anne and Alicia, each married a younger son of Sir Henry Vernon (c. 1445–1515) of Tong Castle (q.v.) and of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire – respectively Thomas and Humphrey Vernon. Thomas inherited Stokesay whilst Hodnet passed, in 1498, to Humphrey Vernon (d. 1542) through his marriage to Alicia Ludlow. Their son, John (d. 1591), married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Richard Devereux, and they produced a well-connected brood; their one daughter, Elizabeth Vernon, married the Earl of Southampton, whilst another, Susan, married Sir Walter Leveson of Lilleshall (q.v.), and son, Robert (1577–1625), eventually succeeded to the estate at Hodnet.