Stapleford Park came into the Sherrard family in 1402. The hall was continuously repaired and enlarged, including a sixteenth-century wing, and a large seventeenth-century extension, and alterations were carried out under the mason-architect Christopher Staveley (1726-1801) for the trustees of the 3rd Earl of Harborough in 1768-69. Robert Sherard, 4th Earl (1712-99) built the church and remodelled and redecorated the house, and in 1773 he commissioned Adam to produce unexecuted designs for a bridge and a rustic farm building. In the 1890s the house received a new Jacobean-style south front, a new range and interior, and it is now used as a spa hotel.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 29; N. Pevsner, and E. Williamson, The buildings of England: Leicester and Rutland, 1984, p. 387; D King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, pp. 225, 248, 252-53, 259

Frances Sands, 2011