Set next to the parish church, Leighton was the stem seat from which the Leighton family takes its name and from whence the senior branch is considered to have moved to Wattlesborough and from thence to Loton Park (q.v.). A member of the family is recorded at Leighton in the reign of Henry I, whilst in the Church of St Mary an effigy of Sir Richard de Leighton (of circa 1385) can be found. This was brought from Buildwas Abbey’s Church at the Dissolution. Of their house, aside from the foundations and panelling in the main hall and one of the first floor bay-windowed bedrooms, little remains as a result of a succession of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rebuilds. It is thought that the predecessor house was a timber-framed structure, which was the result of a sixteenth-century rebuilding. During late nineteenth-century works to the house it was noted that ‘…many features of the Elizabethan house were discovered; many old doors and windows were found in all parts, from roof to cellar; under the old drawing room thirteenth century tiles were turned up…’.

The Leightons of Leighton appear to have divided their time across the generations between the house at Leighton and another property at Rodenhurst Hall near High Ercall. This was certainly the case for John Leighton who married Katherine, the daughter of Thomas Newport of High Ercall, in 1562. In 1695 their descendant, Richard Leighton, was Sheriff of Shropshire. He had married Elizabeth, the daughter of Anthony Kynnersley of Wrickton, a younger branch of a family from Loxley in Staffordshire. Anthony’s father, Thomas, was head of a line of that family seated at Badger (q.v.).

Richard and Elizabeth Leighton’s son, John (1693–1716), was also Sheriff of Shropshire, in 1726, but with his death the Leighton line came to an end. His surviving sisters were co-heirs and Leighton passed to Sarah (1686–1723) who had married her cousin Thomas Kynnersley of Wrickton (d. 1734). Their son, Anthony Kynnersley (1716–1760) succeeded to Leighton and was Sheriff of Shropshire in 1756.