Originally built in the late eighteenth century as Stanmore Grove, the house was then basically a villa on the Wolverhampton to Bridgnorth road. It was also apparently known locally as ‘Gitton’s Folly’ on account of it being mortgaged by a Bridgnorth solicitor of that name and was described as ‘a mean-looking modern brick house’. In 1851, the house was the residence of R. Pigott but, by the 1860s, Stanmore formed a part of the expanding landholdings of the banker John Pritchard, who served as MP for Bridgnorth in 1853– 68. He was the senior partner in the bank Pritchard, Nicholas, Gordon & Co. of Bridgnorth and Broseley.

His father, also John (d. 1837), of Broseley, acted as solicitor for a number of prominent landowners in South Shropshire, including George Forester of Willey (q.v.), and had gone into banking in 1799. Pritchard junior, together with his brother George, had themselves jointly bought land in Shropshire and, after George’s death in 1861, John was in a position to build a suitable seat at Stanmore. The resultant house, built between 1868 and 1870 to the cost of more than £40,000, was designed with advice from John Ruskin who also assisted in the assemblage of Pritchard’s art collection. Pritchard’s brother-in-law, Rev. Osborne Gordon, Rector of Easthampstead, Berkshire, a distinguished Oxford scholar, was also a friend of Ruskin. The architect of the French renaissance style house, whose design was published in The Builder 1st October 1870, was John West Hugall of Oxford who had also rebuilt Rev. O. Gordon’s parish church of St Michael and St Mary Magdalen at Eastampstead in 1867. Stanmore Hall emerged from the building works as a house of Broseley brick with Bath stone dressings. With iron balustrade-surmounted mansard roofs of graded tiles, the main entrance front faced east. This had a recessed three-bay single-storey porch that was set beteen flanking two-bay wings. Two towers, each with a mansard roof, enlivened the service wing on the southern elevation of the building. Technologically, the house was interesting for its reliance on Bridgnorth’s municipal gas and water works from which the services were piped over two miles and the house also had a luggage lift amongst its innovations.