Springton Manor: The Penns' Largest Chester County Estate
Near Intercourse, Pennsylvania
The land around you was once part of Springton Manor, one of the largest reserved estates the Penn family held in Chester County. William Penn himself authorized the tract in seventeen oh one, and it was resurveyed in seventeen thirty, when the manor was measured at eight thousand three hundred thirteen acres, covering most of what is now Wallace Township. The Penns held these reserved manors as personal landholdings separate from the land they sold to settlers, a practice rooted in English manor tradition.
Springton was among the most substantial of these reserves in southeastern Pennsylvania. Today the land has been subdivided and developed, but the boundaries of that original colonial estate still shape the geography of this corner of Chester County.
