Lowe Hall today presents a modest early eighteenth-century brick façade of two storeys and five bays. It is framed by a pair of splendid gate piers surmounted by early eighteenth-century finials, and is often erroneously described as ‘Hanging’ Judge Jefferies’ House. Whilst it is true that the Judge’s son, the 2nd Baron Jefferies of Wem, did visit the house, the false link to the infamous father and the house’s long status as a mere farmhouse has overshadowed the true history of the house and, even more interestingly, its significant surviving early eighteenth-century water garden. The Lowe was, in fact, a seat of the Baron – later Barnes – family and their coat of arms with the date of 1666 is to be seen re-set on the house’s south front. One of the earliest recorded members of the family is William Baron of the Lowe, who appears in the County Jury in 1489, whilst John Barnes of The Lowe died in 1506. The handsome nearby timber-framed house of The Ditches was added to the estate when John Barnes’ grandson, Thomas Barnes (1614–1668), bought that property in 1650.

Samuel Garbet (d. circa 1751) noted that Barnes had added to Lowe Hall itself in building the ‘kitchen, hall, & c. 1635: and the other half which contains the large parlour & c. 1654’, in spite of being levied fines as a Royalist in the Civil War, during which time he was kept a prisoner at Shrawardine Castle (q.v.). His additions of 1635 probably included the handsome Jacobean oak staircase with geometric finial newels and tapered balusters, which are carried on rudimentary guilloche carved ramps. This rises through the house’s three storeys, below a coved roof with central lozenge pendant, and which remains an unexpected feature at the heart of the house. Little else remains of this era, except a moulded panelled overmantel in the first floor south-west corner bedroom.