Notes on the Shropshire estate of the Dukes of Sutherland centred on Lilleshall House: mainly its woodlands, farms, and canals. The area was owned by Lilleshall Abbey from Anglo-Saxon times until it was dissolved in 1538 by Henry VIII. The land soon passed into the hands of the Leveson family, who became the Marquesses of Stafford and Dukes of Sutherland. The west of the estate, the Weald Moors, was drained by the first duke in the 1820s. The estate was sold off in 1912, 1914, and 1917. Some of the estate buildings have been rebuilt at the Ironbridge Museums and the estate archives are mostly held by Shropshire Archives in Shrewsbury. The Leveson-Gower (“lewson gore”) family also owned the large Trentham estate in Staffordshire and the million-acre Sutherland estate in northern Scotland.

We cover a lot of the same ground in the Lilleshall & Trentham Facebook group.