The novelist Evelyn Waugh was a frequent visitor to the house and based the family of Marchmain, who are central to his novel Brideshead Revisited, on the Lygons.

[1] Madresfield is not recorded in the Domesday Book but is mentioned in the Westminster Cartulary of 1086 as a possession of Urse d'Abetot (or d'Abitot), Sheriff of Worcestershire.

Known as "William the Miser", and "the richest commoner in England", Jennens had amassed a very large fortune through inheritance, stock dealing, property investments and money lending.

[b][11] Within the year Frederick Lygon pushed forward the major reconstruction of the court begun by his brother, a building programme that continued almost until the 6th earl's death in 1891.

"Nonsense," Nicolson replied, "he said ‘Shut the door.’"[14] In 1931 the earl was forced abroad following a sexual scandal instigated by his brother-in-law, the Duke of Westminster, Bendor Grosvenor.

[c][16] Jealous of the earl's "public reputation, his splendid offices and his male heir", Westminster intrigued to bring about Beauchamp's destruction.

[e][23] Charles Ryder, the narrator in Brideshead Revisited noted "More even than the work of great architects, I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation".

[24] The historian David Dutton considered that Beauchamp's most lasting legacy was "the assumed portrayal of his family tragedy in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited.

In the event of an invasion breaking out of a likely lodgement in Kent and threatening London, the whole UK government would move to Worcestershire with the royal family residing at Madresfield.

The atmosphere created by the 8th earl and his Danish wife, Mona, was uncongenial to most of the rest of the family and Mary, Dorothy, and Sibell left the house, none returning for fifty years.

[29] From 1970, Madresfield Court was the home of Rosalind, Lady Morrison, William and Mona's niece[30] and, as of 2012, it is run and lived in by her daughter, Lucy Chenevix-Trench.

[34] A panel above the gatehouse, which has been moved from its original position, bears the names of Sir William Lygon and his wife, Elizabeth, and the date 1593.

[g][42] The chapel was decorated in the Arts and Crafts style by Birmingham Group artists including Henry Payne, William Bidlake and Charles March Gere.

[48] Another change by the 7th Earl was the creation of a dramatic staircase hall out of three smaller rooms in the centre of the house, designed by the architect Randall Wells who had built St Edward's Church, Kempley for him in 1903.

The large alabaster, porphyry and green serpentine chimneypiece was a wedding gift to Lettice, Countess Beauchamp in 1902 from her brother the 2nd Duke of Westminster.

Around the panelling at the top of the four walls is stencilled a quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais: "The one remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colour'd glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity; Until Death tramples it to fragments.