Halston Chapel

Halston Hall Chapel is a Grade I listed timber-framed chapel that lies isolated in the ground of Halston Hall. The chapel stands within a raised churchyard and there are extensive earthworks including what appears to be a dried-up moated platform to the south, in the surrounding fields.

The site where Halston Chapel sits goes back to before the Norman Conquest. Known as ‘Holy Stone’ in medieval times, it was then one of many great estates held by the powerful Knights of St John, a brotherhood founded to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land.

The influential Mytton family, whose lands included 32,000 acres in North Wales, moved to Halston in 1549, and lived here until after John Mytton died, nearly 300 years later.

The southern facade of the house overlooks lawns, two lakes and Halston’s private chapel, one of only two timber-framed churches in Shropshire. Experts believe that the chapel was built in the second half of the 15th century.

Halston Hall Chapel is also remarkable for the survival and quality of its early 17th and 18th century fittings. It was built for a preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers that was at Halston from the late 12th century.

There are seven hatchments in place within the chapel and they are described in Summers and Titterton's Hatchments in Shropshire as ‘the best family collection is the seven hatchments for the Mytton family at Halston Hall’. They lived at Halston until after John Mytton, the infamous ‘Mad Jack’ died, nearly 300 years later and Halston was sold by his son, John Fox Mytton in 1847.