Upton Cressett Hall

Upton Cressett Hall is a Elizabethan moated manor house in the village of Upton Cressett, Shropshire, England. It is a Grade I-listed building. The associated gatehouse is separately grade I listed.

The hall was built of brick between c.1540 and c.1580 for the Cressett family to an irregular floor plan and includes an aisled great hall.

The Cressett family became Lords of Upton by marriage in the late 14th century. The hall was built on the site of an earlier house for Hugh (or Hugo) Cressett, a Royal Commissioner in the Welsh Marches and Constable of Mortimer Castle. Hugh and his son Robert were both in turn High Sheriff of Shropshire. Originally the house was timber framed with a great hall, a solar wing and a cross-wing. In 1580 the house was substantially remodelled by Richard Cressett, the High Sheriff of Shropshire for 1584, who encased the building in brick, added large brick chimneystacks and by creating a false ceiling in the great hall allowed the creation of first-floor rooms.

Richard was succeeded in 1601 by Edward Cressett, a prominent Royalist who was killed in 1646 at the Battle of Bridgnorth. Edward's son Sir Francis Cressett became Steward and Treasurer to Charles I; during the English Civil War, Upton Cressett was a Royalist stronghold. James Cressett was a senior diplomat during the reigns of William and Mary and Queen Anne; he served as envoy at the Court of Hanover in the 1690s and envoy extraordinary to Frederick IV of Denmark in 1700.

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