Marche, or Marsh, has two houses of consequence – Marche Manor and Marche Hall. The Hall succeeded the Manor in the eighteenth century and was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century by the Wood family. At the Woods’ departure in 1892, the Manor had been occupied as three workers’ cottages, although the estate agent at the time considered that ‘this with a trifling outlay could be restored into a most charming and picturesque residence’. The restoration – probably at considerably more than a mere trifle – was duly undertaken.

The Manor house’s site had been owned by the de Eyton family from the thirteenth century and a moiety of the manor passed by inheritance, in the early fifteenth century, to William de Eyton’s sister Joan, wife of Roger Clayton. Their daughter, Eleanor, married John ap Griffith, and Marche went to their son, John Gough. The Gough name appears to be a descriptive, a derivative of ‘goch’, the Welsh for red, suggesting that John had red hair. John’s supposed great-grandson, another John Gough (d. 1576), who married Joan Lyster of Rowton (q.v.), appears to have been responsible for the present hall range of Marche Manor. This is of two storeys and largely of close studded timbering.

The house was then further altered and enlarged, seemingly for the Gough’s son, Thomas (d. circa 1614), who married firstly to Margery Hardwicke of Hardwicke, Staffordshire, and secondly to Margaret, daughter of Edward Lloyd of Crosemere (see Leaton Knolls, q.v.). Thomas Gough evidently either completed his father’s building works or effected a rebuilding since the cross-wing, at the eastern end of the hall range, formerly bore the date of 1604 on its north gable. This wing has slight jetties at its first and second floor levels on the north side that are continued around the corner until the great projection of the chimney stack on this side of the house. The north gable itself has exuberant panel decoration of concavesided lozenges that probably owe to Thomas’s works, whilst the first floor of the hall range’s west gable is jettied and has lozenge-in-lozenge panel decoration to enliven the façade. Nineteenth-century alterations, made as a part of F.W. Wateridge’s restoration, make a full understanding of the architectural development of the house difficult.