Dudmaston Hall

Dudmaston Hall
Dudmaston Hall
Location within Shropshire
General information
Location	Severn Valley
Town or city	Shropshire
Country	England
Coordinates	52°29′48″N 2°22′31″W / 52.4966°N 2.3753°W / 52.4966; -2.3753Coordinates: 52°29′48″N 2°22′31″W / 52.4966°N 2.3753°W / 52.4966; -2.3753
Completed	Late 17th century

Dudmaston Hall is a 17th-century country house in the care of the National Trust in the Severn Valley, Shropshire, England.

Dudmaston Hall is located near the village of Quatt, a few miles south of the market town of Bridgnorth, just off the A442 road.

The property is a late 17th-century country mansion and an example of a traditional Shropshire country estate, in that it comprises the main hall, the landscaped gardens, parkland, managed woodlands, lakeside, farmland and the estate cottages, for example at Quatt, a model village designed by London architect John Birch in 1870 for the workers and tenants of the estate.

The Dudmaston estate has been in the Wolryche family or the barely related Wolryche-Whitmore family since 1403, when William Wolryche of nearby Much Wenlock acquired it by marriage to the heiress of the former owners, Margaret de Dudmaston. It is likely that the medieval house was replaced by a structure on the site of the present building in the 16th century. This is shown in a stylised way on old maps as a fortified manor house. It is likely that the main source of income was sheep raising, an important part of the late medieval economy, in which the wool trade played a central role. Unlike many of the Shropshire and Staffordshire gentry, the Wolryches accepted the Reformation and became stalwart Anglicans, but were royalists, as loyal to the House of Stuart as to their Tudor predecessors.

Francis Wolryche (1563–1614) was wealthy enough to have himself and his wife, Margaret Bromley, buried under elaborate effigies in Quatt church. Their son, Sir Thomas Wolryche, 1st Baronet (1598–1668), was the first of the Wolryche baronets – a dignity he achieved not by the usual route of purchase, but through his enthusiastic support for Charles I, who knighted him July 1641 and raised him to the baronetcy a few weeks later. On the outbreak of the English Civil War, he raised troops for the king and was appointed governor of Bridgnorth Castle. When Parliamentary forces arrived at Bridgnorth in 1646, Wolryche's garrison set fire to the town, which was largely destroyed, before retreating into the castle, only to surrender shortly afterwards. Sir Thomas Wolryche was fined £730 14s by Parliament and was one of the few royalists not to recover his money at the Restoration in 1660.