Lythwood Hall’s estate, at the time of the building of George Steuart’s mansion in 1785, was very modest indeed – being less than 200 acres. This small freehold estate had, in medieval times been part of a haye within the Long Forest and it formed part of the possessions of Shrewsbury Abbey after 1346.

In 1547, Lythwood was granted to William Paget and, in the same year, was sold to Robert Longe of Condover. It changed hands again and by 1553 was owned by Thomas and Robert Ireland of Shrewsbury. The Lythwood Hall demesne was separated from the main body of the former monastic estate, apparently in the later sixteenth century, since in 1625 it was settled upon Richard, the son of Richard Owen of Whitley (q.v.) and Sarah, the daughter of Thomas Ireland. There is no indication that the Owens lived at Lythwood, and in circa 1658 the property was sold.

Abraham Giles of Shrewsbury had acquired the site of Lythwood Hall, and was living in a house there in 1662. The Giles family remained at Lythwood until 1727, when Ann, widow of Abraham Giles, made the estate over to her cousin, John Travers. Travers let the house at Lythwood Hall and, in 1730, sold the property to Michael Brickdale of Shrewsbury. The Brickdales were an established family of Shrewsbury burgesses and Michael had been Mayor in 1721. Sadly no record has survived to indicate the appearance of the house that Brickdale possessed.

On his death in 1758 – his two sons having predeceased him – Lythwood went to his bachelor nephew, John Freke Brickdale (b. 1765). On his death, Matthew Brickdale then inherited the estate, but being himself seated at Filton, Somerset, he sold the Shropshire property in 1776 to his sister’s husband (and their mutual second cousin), Joshua Blakeway. Blakeway was a Shrewsbury draper who won £20,000 in a lottery and used this to fund the transformation of the property, with the result that Lythwood Hall came to be nicknamed ‘Lottery Hall’. Blakeway’s son, the Rev. John Brickdale Blakeway, was the early nineteenth-century historian and co-author, with Rev. Hugh Owen, of the 1825 History of Shrewsbury.

Joshua Blakeway marked his new acquisition by commissioning the landscape gardener William Emes to produce a design for the grounds around Lythwood Hall.