The manor of Over Carden (i.e. Lower Carden Hall) remained in the hands of the Fitton family until after 1662, when Owen Fitton was recorded there. Towards the end of the seventeenth century it was sold to the Bradshaws, both families endowing a charity to support a parochial school at Tilston. It later passed to Joseph Worrell, who disposed of it in several lots and the manor passed to the Leche family of Carden Hall, reuniting the two manors under the name Lower Carden. What is now known as Lower Carden Hall became a farmhouse; it survives as a much-restored seventeenth-century building, although the name, somewhat confusingly, does not refer to the manorial residence as it was the manor house of Over Carden.
Carden Hall descended through thirteen generations of John Leches (although not always father to son), until a William Leche held the manor at the start of the nineteenth century, after which it descended through another three John Leches. Ormerod was less interested in this period – the heyday of the Park – than in the complex medieval manorial descents and it has consequently been less easy to get accurate information about it.
The earliest mention of Carden Hall can be dated to 1570×1, when an inquisitio post mortem of John Leche VIII (who died 21 June 1569) states that he died “seised of a capital messuage called the Hall of Carthen”. The construction of the Hall which survived until 1912 probably took place after this date, during the lordship of John Leche IX or John Leche X. On 12 June 1643, Carden Hall was plundered by a detachment from the Parliamentary garrison of Nantwich and took the owner, John Leche X, away with them as a prisoner.
The most picturesque incident during this period was recorded in a handbill published in 1810, which recorded the life of John Harris, known as ‘The English Hermit’. The broadsheet makes a great deal of John Harris's piety, and a recent account claims that he preached in the local villages, which seems unlikely given his decision to retire from the company of other human beings.