The Plowdens are now the only eponymous family to remain seated in their ancestral home in Shropshire, a highly picturesque black-and-white timber-framed house of various dates. The family also remains one of the most ancient recusant families in Britain, with several branches. Their entry in the most recent edition of Burke’s Landed Gentry extends, therefore, to no less than six pages. The house is in a remote part of the county, situated in the parish of Lydbury North, amidst beautiful undulating wooded scenery with no park walls or pretentious lodge gates to mark the family’s presence. Tellingly, the family’s investment in ‘outworks’ has extended only to the Presbytery and Catholic church of St Walburga at Plowden, built for William Plowden in 1862, whilst the school was added by his son in 1874.

The documented lineage of the Plowden family stems from Roger de Plowden who was reputedly present at the Siege of Acre in 1191. He is said, with his neighbours, the Walcots of Walcot and Oakeleys of Oakeley, to have been granted the right to two fleur-de-lis on his coat of arms by Phillip II of France, under whom he served prior to Richard Coeur de Lion. He is thought to have built the Plowden Chapel onto St Michael’s Church at Lydbury North as an act of thanks and piety for his safe return from the Crusades. His descendants have continued in the male line at Plowden and the house – whilst not obviously exhibiting features from the time of Roger de Plowden – itself demonstrates a continual development upon an ancient manorial site to create the roughly H-plan building that stands today.

The earliest part of the house is the hall, which stands at the centre, on the east front. Externally, this is a five-bay structure with dormers in the roof, inserted when the original hall was divided by a first floor. Originally, though, the hall would have been open to the roof and evidence of the crown post, which has a moulded base and is flanked with up-swinging braces, can be seen in a first-floor room – it having been revealed in recent works.