The village of Ford contains no less than three capital mansion houses: Ford Hall, Ford House and Ford Mansion House. Although each possessed an associated landed estate, not one of the houses was the seat of the lord of the manor. The manor of Ford, which encompassed an area greater than the village’s ecclesiastical parish, was owned by the Talbot Earls of Shrewsbury from the sixteenth century until being sold by them in 1824 to Sir Henry Wakeman (d. 1824), of the family associated with Rorrington and, later, Yeaton Peverey (q.v.). The Wakemans sold it, before 1884, to the Warter family of Longden Manor (q.v.).

Ford Hall

Ford Hall was purchased by John Calcott from Griffith Davies, in 1669, and the present house, built for Calcott’s son, George, in 1729, occupies the site of a modest house that was recorded as having three hearths in 1662. As it now stands, the house is of white painted brick on a stone plinth, a rectangular block of three bays crowned by a central gable that stands up from a tall hipped roof. The house is originally said to have been built on a U-plan, although this is not now obvious as it has been subject to much alteration in circa 1800 and later. The most significant of the changes is that the house’s original five bay front has been radically altered to the current three bays, whilst the south front now has a central gabled porch, and nineteenth-century bay windows stand out on the east and west fronts. On both of these latter elevations, though, segmental headed windows and keystones can still be seen that give some indication of the quality of the original early eighteenth-century build. Inside, the most significant early feature is the oak staircase with its ramped flights running between square newels and supported on slender turned balusters. In spite of the house’s name and its evident original pretensions, the estate was never large, comprising just 175 acres at its height in 1775.

Ford Hall passed by marriage to the Gough family in 1749, with the owners thereafter becoming the Calcott-Goughs. They retained ownership of Ford Hall until 1837 when the house and its remaining 111 acres were sold. By 1906 the property was owned by Henry Lee who, in that year, sold it to H.R. Rossall Sandford.