219 - Stableford Hall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2023
Summary
Stableford Hall is essentially a plain, mid-Georgian house of brick, with a principal south-east-facing front of seven bays and two-and-a-half storeys, the outer two bays and central bay projecting slightly. Around the corner, on the north-east front, rises a full height canted bay. The form of the house was tricked up in the later nineteenth century, when a substantial parapet was added to the façades, heavy stone segmental-arched lintels crowned the windows, and a single-storey three-bay balustraded porch with pairs of Tuscan pilasters flanking arched openings was set before the door.
Stableford had come into the possession of the Warter family as a result of the marriage of John Warter to Joan, daughter and heiress of Walter Bullock in the reign of Henry VII. John had also acquired lands at Cruckmeole (see Longden Manor q.v.), which became the principal Warter seat, although a branch of the family continued to own Stableford until the seventeenth century. Then the property appears to have been partitioned by John Warter (d. 1627) – his great-granddaughter Miriam, the wife of Edward Perks, sold her property and his grandson, John Warter, a barrister from Mortlake, Surrey, also sold his portion.
By the early nineteenth century, Stableford had become the seat of the Jasper family who, in addition to their landed interests, also had a flour mill at Bridgnorth which used power from a Trevithick engine to drive its three stones. The Jaspers are said to have been amongst the earliest landowners to have harnessed steam power for threshing, having an engine in circa 1804. The Hall remained the seat of John Jasper in 1851 and he was a notable sportsman who kept a pack of harriers at Stableford. By 1870, though, Stableford had passed to his grandson, Thomas Smith, the son of Frances Jasper (d. 1852), third daughter of John Jasper, and
her husband Captain T. Smith of the 82nd Regiment. It was probably Thomas Smith who was responsible for the Victorian alterations to the exterior of the house which, after his departure, was noted by John Randall as essentially the brick house that had been built by the Jaspers. By the time that Randall wrote of Stableford, though, Smith had moved to Beaumaris and sold Stableford to the Chandos-Pole family.
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- Information
- The Country Houses of Shropshire , pp. 589 - 591Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021