Description:The image above shows an extract from George Plaxton’s A History of Lilleshall.
Clergyman and antiquary George Plaxton was a beneficiary and close associate of the Leveson–Gower family during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In his history of Lilleshall, Plaxton wrote that following ‘the generall Downfall of Religious Houses’, James Leveson ‘Marchant of the Staple at Calis, commonly called James Leveson of Wolverhampton Esq’ purchased Lilleshall Abbey and the lands and properties associated with the Abbey.
J. R. Wordie tells us that James Leveson purchased Lilleshall Abbey and the lands and properties associated with the Abbey between 1537 and 1540. He adds that Sir William Leveson-Gower (1636-1691) added to the family’s Shropshire estates when he purchased lands in Sheriffhales in 1688.
The ruins of Lilleshall Abbey survive today, as does Lilleshall Lodge which is now Lilleshall National Sports Centre.
Contextual and Biographical Information from: J. R. Wordie ‘Estate Management in Eighteenth Century England: The Building of the Leveson-Gower Fortune’ (Royal Historical Society, 1982)
and Jan Broadway, ‘Plaxton, George (1647/8–1720)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/70087]