The Manor of Shillington Rectory

The arms of ramsey Abbey

Shillington Rectory manor does not appear in The Victoria County History for Bedfordshire which is usually excellent at giving histories of manors within the county. The great majority of the documents are held by the former Lords of the Manor, Trinity College Cambridge, the earliest court roll dating from 1388.

It seems reasonable to assume that the manor was in the same hands as the advowson. This belonged, like the Manor of Shillington, to Ramsey Abbey from earliest time, quite possibly before the Norman Conquest of 1066. On the dissolution of the abbey in 1539 the advowson passed to Lord Wriothesley for a short time before being given to Trinity College in 1547. A succession of Law of Property Acts in the 1920s effectively abolished manors in all but name