Pillaton Hall

Pillaton Hall was an historic house located in Pillaton, Staffordshire, near Penkridge, England. For more than two centuries it was the seat of the Littleton family, a family of local landowners and politicians. The 15th century gatehouse is the main surviving structure of medieval Pillaton Hall. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade II* listed building. Attached to the Gatehouse to the east is the chapel formerly dedicated to Saint Modwen.

By the mid-15th century, the manor of Pillaton belonged to the Wynnesbury family. There must have been a substantial building already on the site of the later Hall, presumably a fortified manor house, as the remains of the medieval moat are still very evident even from a satellite photograph. William Wynnesbury died in 1502, leaving the manor to his daughter Alice, who was married to Richard Littleton, formerly William's steward. When Alice died in 1529, Pillaton passed to their son, Edward Littleton. Later knighted, he died at Pillaton in 1558.

By this time the Littletons were set on a course for domination of the Penkridge area and it was around the mid-16th century that they built a substantial hall at Pillaton. The moated manor, built around a quadrilateral courtyard, comprising residential quarters and a Great Hall to the south, and a kitchen range to the west, was approached via the Gatehouse on the south. The Gatehouse, of two storeys rose to three in the centre, raised by four circular domed angle turrets. The chapel formerly dedicated to Saint Modwen lay next to the gatehouse on its eastern side.

In the 17th century the heads of the family became the Littleton Baronets and in the 19th the Barons Hatherton. However, the fourth and last of the Littleton baronets, who succeeded in 1742, moved the family seat north to Teddesley Hall, allegedly building it with hoards of cash discovered hidden at Pillaton.

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