Early owners of the estate included the Malmayne family. Matilda Malmayne, heiress of the estate, married Edmund Plecy. The Plecy male line became extinct towards the end of the fourteenth century, and the estate was transferred to Edmund and Matilda's descendant Joan Plecy, as heiress. Lady Joan Plecy was soon married to Sir John Hamelyn (d. 1399), but with no male heirs, the estate went to Sir John's daughter Egidia, by his second wife, who married Robert Ashley. The estate has belonged to the Ashleys and Ashley-Coopers ever since.