page_title: Lilleshall Hall
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Lilleshall Hall / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Western end oof remains of the church, showing the main west portal. Lilleshall Abbey, Lilleshall, near Telford, Shropshire.
context_page_description: Lilleshall Hall is a large former country house and estate in the fields of Lilleshall, Shropshire, England.
  It is run by Serco Leisure Operating Ltd on behalf of Sport England as one of three National Sports Centres, alongside Bisham Abbey and Plas y Brenin. It lies between Telford and Newport.
context_section_description: The core of the Lilleshall estate, which amounts to 30,000 acres (120 km²), was originally the demesne of Lilleshall Abbey, an Augustinian foundation of the 12th century. The ruins of the original Lilleshall Abbey are protected today by English Heritage. The estate was granted after the Dissolution of the Monasteries to James Leveson, a Wolverhampton wool merchant, in 1539. His family, including Walter Leveson and Vice-Admiral Richard Leveson, the last of his direct line, lived in a lodge in the grounds, although they were only occasionally resident in Lilleshall, as they had many other houses. The estates passed to Richard Leveson, a distant cousin who was a prominent Royalist in the English Civil War and fortified the Abbey, inviting a severe bombardment. As he too failed to produce heirs, Lilleshall then passed to Sir William Leveson-Gower, 4th Baronet, founder of an illustrious political dynasty, who married Lady Jane Granville, daughter of the Earl of Bath.
  The first of the family to be ennobled, in 1703, was John Leveson-Gower, 1st Baron Gower. His son and grandson, John Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Gower, and Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, progressed further up the ranks of the English peerage and it was probably the latter who converted a 17th-century house, in the village of Lilleshall itself, into a country residence in the late 1750s. The lodge lingered on, in a deteriorating state, until 1818, when it was demolished.
  George Granville Leveson-Gower after his marriage in 1765, considered even the mid-18th century Hall too small but it was not until the 1820s that his wife instructed the architect Jeffry Wyatville and local builders to commence work on the present Hall. It was constructed beyond the eastern end of the original estate, in the parish of Sheriffhales, although still called Lilleshall Hall. It was completed in 1829, three years before the newly elevated Duke of Sutherland's death. The Hall was scheduled in 1984 as a Grade II* listed building. The former Lilleshall Hall, in the village, was at first retained by the family, probably as a dower house, before being sold in 1930.
  The approach to the estate from the main Wolverhampton to Chester Road is through the "Golden Gates", an exact replica of those adorning Buckingham Palace. The gardens include many bridges, the original canal, an ornamental garden, a Grecian temple, ponds and the Apple Walk (about half its original pergola length). The 70-foot (21 m) high obelisk was built in 1833 in memory of the 1st Duke of Sutherland and designed by G.E. Hamilton.
caption: Ruins of the abbey: the west end of the abbey church.
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