The Whitehall today makes a surprising appearance in the streetscape of Shrewsbury but its mansion was built, post-Reformation, on a rural site which had been a Grange of the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul. A range of buildings, which still retains its Harnage slate roof running east of the house, is said to have been one of the Abbey’s Granaries.

In 1578 Christopher Hatton, a member of the Rocke family and Richard Prince (c. 1525–1598) purchased the former Abbey properties in Shrewsbury. Prince had already made some purchases of the monastery’s former lands and he and his descendants continued to add to the property, finally buying the manorial rights from the Hatton descendants in 1654. Prince was of Shrewsbury stock, his father, John, having been a shoemaker and, reputedly, warden of St Giles’ Hospital. He, though, trained in the law and was admitted Burgess of Shrewsbury in 1551. He entered the Middle Temple from 1554, becoming Member of Parliament for Bridgnorth in 1559, and also received the Patent Office of Purveyor of Italian Groceries at the Queen’s Court of Whitehall. This latter has been argued to be the reason for his naming his house Whitehall, in reference to the Royal Palace in London, although Rev. Hugh Owen, writing anonymously, in 1808 noted that it was ‘so called from the practice, which, no doubt, has long prevailed of white-washing this respectable mansion of venerable red stone’.

The house was built using local red sandstone, which was probably sourced from the demolished parts of the Abbey buildings. Although there has been a local tradition that the whitewash was to disguise the origin of the building material, it would also have been a practical means of preventing stone erosion – something which is now all too evident – and the washing appears to have begun in the eighteenth century.