Along the Moors - Apley

Dothill Park

Apley’s late 18th Century renaissance was not a particularly unusual occurrence in the context of the period and, just across the other side of the Whitchurch Road, another of Wellington’s historic seats underwent a similar transformation. Like Apley, Dothill Park was listed in the Domesday survey as an outlying farmstead belonging to Wellington Manor but its fortunes eventually became linked to a local family whose influence and patronage also extended well beyond the confines of the estate walls. The Foresters, hereditary wardens of the Royal Forest of The Wrekin, appear to have moved to Dothill around 1602 after disposing of Old Hall, their former home on Holyhead Road, and set about making great changes to the property during the early 18th Century.

Sometime before 1726, seven acres of formal gardens were laid out around the house, creating open vistas of the surrounding area and adding other notable features, including a grass amphitheatre and a canalised moat. A house had stood within this rectangular enclosure since at least the middle ages and it, too, was modernised in the later half of the century (between 1763 and 1765), when a north-facing, brick extension of five bays and three storeys was added to the existing property; which probably consisted of a five-bayed range, hall and west wing recorded in 1626. Sadly, most of the garden features appear to have reverted to grass by the end of the 1700s, while the older parts of the house itself were demolished not long after. Yet, across the road at Apley, one of the most opulent edifices of the Georgian age in Shropshire was beginning to take shape.