Shifnal Manor was described by Leland in the 1540s as ‘a Manor place of Tymber and a Parke’ that belonged to the Earls of Shrewsbury. It was here that James Talbot had died of the wounds sustained at the Battle of Northampton in 1460 and where, eight years later, George, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury (1468–1538), was born.

In 1590, on the death of the 6th Earl, Shifnal passed to his son, Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury (1552–1616). The 7th Earl was the son of his father’s first wife, Gertrude Manners (c. 1525–1567), daughter of the 1st Earl of Rutland. In 1568 his father remarried – as her fourth husband – Bess of Hardwick (c. 1527–1608), and, in the same year, Gilbert married her daughter from her second marriage to Sir William Cavendish, Mary (1556– 1632). Although the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury’s axis of existence seems to have centred on the Derbyshire and South Yorkshire estates of the family, there was evidently activity taking place at Shifnal Manor from 1594 including the raising of the ceiling of the dining parlour to twenty-one feet and the room was given an east window which Lord Shrewsbury’s steward declared to be ‘the stateliest window of timber I ever did see’. The Earl’s parlour was also paved and the newel staircase – which ascended to the Great Chamber – was widened. The result, by 1635, was that Shifnal Manor was a large courtyard house with an irregular south front that was dominated by a pair of turrets and with a profusion of glazed windows on its eastern side. This is shown as a vignette on an estate map of this date and, aside from the house on its promontory of land, an elaborate formal garden is also depicted. Enclosures south of the house contain geometrical parterres and, upon a bastion, a domed summer house that presides over a formal walk and heart-shaped pool, with a formal canal embracing the site to the south-east. The symbolism of the pool cannot be ignored since the Shrewsbury and Arundel families were prominent Roman Catholics and it is possible that the garden had an allegorical or didactic form.