Pitchford, ‘the Queen of black-and-white timber houses’ as Augustus Hare declared the mansion to be in 1898, is in many ways imbued with the DNA of Shropshire. That Hare could describe the house thus – prior to the burning of Park Hall (q.v.) is an indicator of the affection with which the house is held by Salopians and, to many, it was heart-breaking when the house and its indigenous collections were severed by sale in 1992. The failure of the then Environment Minister to ensure support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund resulted in the National Trust – its intended owner – declining acceptance of the house. Instead, it was sold, an empty shell, to an overseas buyer who seemingly never lived there during the twenty-plus years in which they owned the property. Now the daughter of the 1992 vendors, with her husband, has reunited the house with the kernel of its historic estate and the property is, once more, loved and, most importantly, lived in.

Pitchford sits in a hollow besides the Church of St Michael and All Angels and, in the wooded bluff behind the church, to the north of the house, is the bituminous well which gives the place its name. It was held, in 1086, by Sir Ralph de Pytchford and another, of the same name, inherited in 1211 and is known to have rebuilt the church prior to his death in 1252. This Ralph’s son, Sir John de Pitchford (1237–85), is said to have accompanied Prince Edward on the eighth and last Crusade and was immortalised by the recumbent oak effigy of a knight that reposes in the church. A manor house was recorded in 1284, during Sir John’s time, although its location is uncertain. It may have occupied the site of Pitchford Hall’s west wing, which represents the earliest part of the house.

As it stands today, though, the west wing is of the fifteenth century and was probably the work of Thomas Ottley (d. 1485), a Shrewsbury Merchant of the Staple, who acquired the estate in 1473. Ottley was the third son of Philip Oteley of Oteley and had prospered through the wool trade, also having a house in Shrewsbury in Market Street, on a site later occupied by the Talbot Hotel.