Through the 18th Century the succession passed through the female line to the Leigh family and then to the Dilkes. The last of the line died in comparative poverty and Packwood was eventually sold to George Oakes Arton, a Birmingham solicitor. When George died in 1901 the principal interest of the property was not the half-timbered mansion of the Fetherstons, but the celebrated and, by then, mystical antiquity of the gardens.