Linley is a little-known house but one of huge architectural quality which occupies a relatively remote position in the hill country of the western Shropshire borders. Its elevations and plans were never engraved for any of the key contemporary architectural publications of the eighteenth century, whilst, in the late nineteenth century, the poor finances of its owners, the More family, and its tenanted-status similarly served to diminish the house’s importance.

Linley has gained attention through the discovery of designs for the house by the late Sir Jasper More, two articles by Arthur Oswald in Country Life in 1961 and Sir Jasper’s own endearing book, A Tale of Two Houses (1978). Architecturally it stands supreme in Shropshire as the county’s most important first-generation Palladian villa and a house which ranks high in national importance on account of its advanced villa plan and the pedigree of its architect. This was Henry Joynes (c. 1684–1754), Vanbrugh’s Clerk of Works in the building of Blenheim from 1705–15 and who, in the latter year, went on to succeed Nicholas Hawksmoor as the Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace, where he remained employed throughout the building of Linley. As such, Joynes was positioned to know not only the architectural fashions of the previous generation, but of the architects associated with the Court of Frederick Prince of Wales, including William Kent whose influence can be detected at Linley. Joynes’ great value was that not only was he able to design with ingenuity but that he was a careful and conscientious architect, as his surviving correspondence of fourteen letters with his client, Robert More, indicates.

The More family had acquired the Linley estate by purchase, in 1580, from a seemingly unrelated family of the same name. They were no doubt attracted by the rich deposits of lead at Shelve from which they were to derive income through into the nineteenth century. The lead mines had doubtless been the reason for Roman settlers at Linley, with a Roman villa’s site being located south-west of the mansion and a pig of lead, said to be Roman, remaining in the present house. The late sixteenth-century purchaser of the property was Robert More (d. 1603/4) who had married Susan, sister of Humphry Davenport of Weston, Warwickshire, and who was buried at the parish church of St Peter, in the village of More.