Shenton Hall

Shenton Hall is a 17th-century country house at Shenton, Leicestershire. It is a Grade II* listed building.

Shenton Hall (photograph by Malcolm Street)

The 2,300-acre (930 ha) estate at Shenton was purchased in 1625 by William Wollaston (1581–1666) and he built the house in the Jacobean style of the day. The detached gatehouse, also Grade II*, incorporates a date stone WW 1629

Wollaston and his son both served as High Sheriff of Leicestershire. On the latter's death in 1688, the estate passed to a cousin William Wollaston, writer and philosopher.[1][2] The house was greatly extended to the rear in 1862.

The Wollastons occupied the house until 1940. During World War II the army took possession and the prisoners of war were accommodated on the estate.[3]

References
  1. Genealogical Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley 1878 "After Mrs. Wollaston's death Shenton Hall was occupied for a short time by Mr. Hewitt of Stretton, but was soon degraded into a farmhouse, for the new family of Wollaston fixed their residence at Finborough Hall in Suffolk."
  2. Trollope An Inventory of the Church Plate of Leicestershire 1890 "Sir John Chester until his second marriage in 1714, made Shenton Hall his home; his son William continued to live here with his grandmother Mrs. Wollaston; and here he was married on 5th March, 1716-17, to Penelope, the eldest daughter ..."
  3. Stephen Butt Nichols' Lost Leicestershire p122

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