As a second-generation Lancashire blow-in, Shropshire and those gathered around its celebrated hill, the Wrekin, have been extremely kind and helpful to me in the research and writing of this work. The enthusiasm of all of the house owners has been unfailing and I am immensely grateful to them. Not one owner has declined access or ignored a request for information and the level of information that I have been able to give herein has been a happy reflection of this. Any lacunae – or pernicious error – that the reader may find is either the fault of the author or down to the fact that information has been unknown to him. The descendants of the Friends around the Wrekin of Farquhar’s time could not have been kinder. So numerous have those around the Wrekin been, as the number of houses in this work testifies, that it would be quite impossible to contain the length of the book in thanking each and every one individually, although my gratitude to all who have assisted is unbounded.

The county boundary of Shropshire that I have applied to this work is that which currently stands, including the area of the relatively new authority of Telford. Excluded, therefore, is Halesowen, that one-time detached portion of the county, but included is the portion of the county to the east of Market Drayton. Unlike earlier chroniclers of Shropshire’s country houses, I have elected not to include Weston Park, which bears the postal address of Shropshire – on account of its local railway station being within the county at Shifnal – but which is and always has been in Staffordshire. The decision in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to admit its inclusion was on account of the owning-family’s title being that of the Bradford Hundred of Shropshire and since the head of the family was, at that time, Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire.