The origins of a separate manor of Carden are obscure. Ormerod conjectured that Carden was a single manor until the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) before being divided into Over and Nether Carden. The family that held the manor took the local name Caurthyn and various fines and leases have survived. Richard Caurthyn granted his brother William a quarter of Clutton in a charter attested by Robert Stutevile; this may have been the origin of the division of the manor. William?s descendants continued to hold land in Carden throughout the Middle Ages, although the failure of one branch of the male line in the reign of Henry IV (1399-1413) brought the manors into new families.

In 1313, Agnes, wife of Geoffrey Stotvile of Carden and heiress of Richard Caurthyn, levied a fine in favour of Robert Codinton, husband or son of Leuca de Caurthyn, conjectured to have been her daughter. Leuca was coheir with her sisters Margaret and Ellen to certain lands in Chowley.

The Codinton family also had interests in Carden as well as Coddington; another family with property locally, the Cudyntons, seems not to have been related. In 1336, William son of Gronw Cudynton and his wife, Cristian, obtained property in Over Carden from Richard and Mabel Cholmondlegh. There is no evidence that these lands were ever manorial, though.

The descents of the manors through the Middle Ages are complicated by their division into six parts through the coheiresses Leuca, Margaret and Ellen Caurthyn. By 1419 Isabel, daughter and heiress of John Beston and widow of Sir Robert Aston held lands in Carden. Her interests in Carden derived from her paternal grandmother, Isabel, daughter of Cecily, heir of John Codinton, presumed descendant of Leuca and Robert Codinton. Two years later Isabel, now married to Sir John Caryngton, obtained more lands in Carden, Farndon, Cuddington, Clutton and elsewhere from Ralph de Beston.

It is the portion of Carden that was in the ownership of the William de Caurthyn who died in the reign of Henry IV that is of greatest relevance to Carden Hall. His daughter and coheir Eleanor was married to John Leche III, claimed by some to have been a younger brother of the Leche family of Chatsworth, and the manor of Nether Carden was vested in her. Because of the habit of naming the heir to the estate John for many generations, numbers have been assigned to the individuals. The Leche family had held property in Carden as early as 1346, when Eva Warin released land to John Leche I and his wife Lucy, her sister. Their son, John Leche II, is said to have been surgeon to Edward III and given Castle Warin and other lands in County Kildare. The manor of Over Carden passed to a younger branch of the Fittons of Bollin by the marriage of Isabel, daughter of William Caurthyn to Thomas Fitton


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.