Lillingstone Lovell

The earliest signs of human activity in Lillingstone Lovell parish are finds of Iron Age and Roman pottery from ploughed fields. Much of the archaeological record is concerned with the medieval past of the parish, as it was part of Whittlewood Forest. The only standing building from the medieval period is the St Mary’s Church. The tower is thirteenth century, though the chantry chapels were rebuilt in the fourteenth century and the porch was constructed in the seventeenth century. The chancel was reduced in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries when a lot of restoration also took place.

There are historical references to a chapel in Great Lillingstone in the thirteenth century and references to a windmill from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. There are some earthworks at Hall Farm that seem to represent a possible house platform, surrounded by a ditch but crossed by medieval ridge-and-furrow. Similar features have been recognised at Glebe Farm. A series of fishponds that may date to the medieval period have also been recorded at Lillingstone Hall, the house itself was demolished in the eighteenth century. This indicates smaller more dispersed settlement in the medieval period.

The surviving listed buildings are eighteenth century in date, like Hall Farm and Glebe House, the former rectory. Aerial photographs show the earthworks of seventeenth century garden features and the seventeenth to eighteenth century road leading to the former manor house of Lillingstone Hall.