The Estate was founded by Thomas Parr around 1830. Thomas was born in 1792 into an old-established Lancashire family with banking interests in Warrington. After a tragically short marriage in 1825 which produced just one daughter he married again, in 1833, Alice Charlton from Shropshire and they eventually had eight more children.
The land which made up the Estate had been farmed in smaller units for many years before the Estate’s formation. Thomas bought the land, including Witherwin Farm and what became Dairy Farm, over a period of some years, until he eventually owned an area of around 150 acres.
The house was built in a raised location in the centre of the land with impressive views over the parkland and Appleton Park. Formal gardens surrounded the house on three sides and made an attractive setting with lawns, terraces and a bowling green around the house, surrounded by parkland and, further away, farmland.
Thomas’s third son, J. Charlton Parr, inherited the Estate in 1870 and lived in it until 1918. Joseph was a very wealthy man and, although he did not make great alterations to the Estate, he appears to have maintained it to a very high standard. The late 19th century seems to have been the Estate’s heyday, with photographs and accounts from the time showing a comfortable and well-staffed home for Joseph, his wife and their four children.
On Joseph’s death in 1922 the Estate passed to his son, Roger Charlton Parr and later to Major H.C. Parr. The house was not lived in by the family after 1941 and it seems likely that the Estate suffered the same economic pressures as so many country seats during and after the Second World War.
The house and formal gardens were sold in 1951, for £7,500, to the British Transport Commission. The farms and other structures were also sold around this time to a variety of buyers.
Finally, after a period as a furniture store, the House and surrounding land passed to the Warrington-Runcorn Development Corporation in 1975. They demolished the house, which was by then in a very dilapidated condition, as well as many of the associated structures.