The Moor or Moor Park was, in the eighteenth century, a seat of the Salwey family who are today seated at the neighbouring estate of The Lodge (q.v.). The family appears to have acquired the property from cousins, the Littleton family of Pillaton in Staffordshire, with the purchase seemingly made concurrently with that of the Elton Hall estate in Herefordshire from the same vendors. The purchaser appears to have been Major Richard Salwey, the fifth son of Humphrey Salwey of Stanford, Worcestershire, and his wife Anne, second daughter of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton. Major Salwey, who was married to Anne Waring, served as a Major in the Parliamentarian army, was MP for Worcester in 1653, Westmorland in 1659, and in 1654 became Cromwell’s ambassador to Constantinople, developing a stream of mercantile income that aided his acquisitions.

In 1715 the estate was inherited by the Major’s grandson, Richard Salwey who, by 1722, had rebuilt the house and laid out formal gardens around it. In the latter year he had commissioned Isaac Vogelsanck and Bernard Lens to paint a view of the west front, showing his works to house and garden. The nine-bay, red brick house appears as of two storeys above a cellar, with the centre three bays crowned by a giant oculus-centred pediment with modillion cornice that stands out against a tiled roof with flanking dormer windows. Giant Doric pilasters framed the central three bays and a central door with segmental pediment stood at the head of a short flight of steps. The end bay to each side is shown treated as a two-storeyed pavilion, with pyramid roof, not unlike the early eighteenth-century elevations of Hawkstone (q.v.). Equally fascinating in the painting, are the gardens shown around the house, with a walled courtyard with central path leading to a gate screen flanked by lawns, each with central plinth supporting a lead statue and a canal in the foreground. Moor’s gardens were clearly an important feature of the estate at that time, as the painting shows.