This handsome early eighteenth-century house of five bays and two storeys was built for the Shrewsbury draper Samuel Adderton (1674–1721) and his wife, Rebecca (1689–1770), the daughter of Robert Hill of Tern (now Attingham, q.v). Following her father’s death, Rebecca was one of five sisters who each received a handsome settlement in lieu of the Tern Estate from their uncle, the Hon. Richard Hill. In Rebecca’s case, this was £1,200, which Samuel Adderton was discussing with her uncle John Hill in 1710. These dates provide a clue for the date of the house at Preston Montford since it is likely that this inheritance contributed to its construction. The resultant house is in many ways the later country cousin of Newport House in Shrewsbury, the influential house built for Francis Newport, 1st Earl of Bradford, and it also has strong stylistic similarities with Great Berwick (q.v.). Adderton’s monogram still remains on the handsome lead rainwater-heads which flank the main elevation.

Samuel and Rebecca Adderton’s son, Hill Adderton (1710–1746), was their heir. During his minority, his uncle, Leighton Owen Griffiths (d. 1748) – who was married to Anne Hill – lived at Preston Montford from 1725 until 1733, whilst building Dinthill (q.v.). From the Addertons, the house eventually passed to the Chambres of Petton and then, by marriage, to the Hills.

In 1803, and until 1816, the house was described as the ‘residence and property of James Parry, Esq.’ and it may have been for him that the Greek Revival alterations were made. At this time the stiff arrangement of early-Georgian parlours was done away with in a modernisation which bears all the hallmarks of the Shrewsbury architect Edward Haycock. The central entrance door of the south front was treated as a pedimented tripartite window – a motif commonly used by Haycock at, for instance, the centre of the garden front at nearby Onslow – and the former entrance hall within the house was opened into the adjoining room, by means of a screen of Greek Doric columns, to form a spacious drawing room adorned with a new anthemion frieze. The entrance to the house was moved to the north-east corner of the building, marked by a single-storey portico of a flat entablature supported by a pair of unfluted Greek Doric columns.