PETTON HALL

Petton Hall is situated in the tiny hamlet of Petton approximately half an hour drive from the country town of Shrewsbury and 20 minutes from Ellesmere. Petton Hall has not always residential properties, and through the years the estate has passed through many hands since . The earliest documented evidence of Petton is in the Doomsday Book.

Emma Florence Cunliffe, daughter of John Sparling inherited the Old Petton Hall at the age of 19 in 1867. A strong woman who ruled like a monarch on the estate, her word was law because usually people's livelihoods depended on her. Mrs Cunliffe was to arrange for the old Hall to be pulled down to make way for her more imposing new house in around 1892, which was positioned close to the original Hall. The access approach, the drive and gardens were all rearranged. The Kitchen gardens and vineries were extensive and highly productive at this time. The estate had its own out door swimming pool, yet it is unknown when that was installed as later on the school used it (the less said about that the better).

Mrs Cunliffe had started to sell off parts of the estate in 1920, under instruction of her husband Captain Ellis Brooke Cunliffe. She died on 13th May 1925 and was succeeded by her son Ellis, whom died only one month later in June 1925. He was unmarried, so the hall was to pass to his brother William Noel their forth and only remaining son. The estate was sold in 1928 in 11 lots with the Hall being Lot 1.

The Hall was bought by Mr Parry and his wife Isabel who set up a private Preparatory School for boys with well off parents whose children with special needs. Isabel died in 1933 and the school was sold for a reputed £26,000 plus the same amount again for fixtures and fittings to Shropshire Education authority in 1947. It was a residential, seven day special boarding school for boys and girls were admitted as day pupils in 1976 and became a five day residential co-educational school in 1977 with about 30 mixed day pupils. It was closed as a school in July 1990, when it stood empty for many years. Petton Hall was finally sold in 1996 with planning permission for 11 individual units, for the purchasers to develop themselves.

I attended the school from February 1986 – July 1988, both as a day pupil and boarder when we had moved from Manchester to Oswestry in 1986. I often wonder what it would be like to go back and see it now (although they weren't my happiest of times), especially to go up the tower, as that was always out of bounds to all school pupils.




- Sarah Joy Holden