There has been a house at Alscot since the middle Ages, at one time it belonged to Deerhurst Priory in Gloucestershire and then it passed to Tewkesbury Abbey. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 it passed into private hands including the Marriett family. In 1747 Preston and Alscot, together with the adjacent manors of Whitchurch, Wimpstone and Crimscote, were sold to James West, MP.

James West (1703-1772), was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a noted collector of books, manuscripts and coins. He also became President of the Royal Society. In 1746 he was appointed Joint Secretary to the Exchequer, a post he held until 1762 when he retired to live at Alscot.

Mrs. West, writing to her brother abroad about her husband's purchase of Alscot, says, ‘'it is the comicallest little old house that you ever saw. The grand entrance is by a sweep in the Park, which brings you to a Bowling Green where you enter a Little Tiny Hall, on the right of which is a long narrow Drawing Room....‘ In a later letter she wrote ‘'it really is a sweet place and we have a river which winds very beautifully through the park and close to one part of it is a very quick rising hill upon which is the finest growth of tall firs I ever saw; besides the river we have three very fine pieces of water in the park which fat the finest carp, tench, perch and pike. The house is a very bad one, but if I get a good prize in the Lottery we are to build in the spring.

James West's father was a successful London cloth merchant, but his grandfather had been Mayor of Banbury. Through his parliamentary connections West knew many members of the gentry and nobility who had country mansions in the Midlands, such as George, later Lord Lyttleton of Hagley, Lord Aylsford of Packington and Lord Coventry of Croome.