Little Shelford manor copied from oil painting by F Wale

Little Shelford Manor, Manor Road

History of Little Shelford Manor

Listed building:

Small country house built mostly in 1746 for William Finch but with part dating from late C17.

Coach-house, now garage with apple loft above, dated 1708 and initialled CA on oval panel in lozenge to one wall.

Summer house, early C18. Red brick with pantiled roof.

Fanny Wale writes about Little Shelford manor in “Shelford Parva”:

The Manor property of Little Shelford was for more than three centuries in the family of Freville, of which it was purchased by Alderman J Banks, who sold it to Sir Horatio Pallivicini after the year 1600; it was Pallivicini who built the Manor House as it appears in the above photograph.

The garden round the Manor House was laid out in the Italian style, with a moat all round it, and to keep it full of water a dam was made across the river Granta.

Pallivicini had been a Papal tax collector under Queen Mary but he became a great favourite of Queen Elizabeth I and commanded an English ship at the battle with the Spanish Armada in 1588.

In 1915 a wounded Belgian Captain named Frain and his young wife were guests with Miss M Walton for several months.

A bachelor once lived at the Manor House for a short time as a tenant. He went to travel abroad leaving some servants in charge of the house, who after a while received a letter to say that their master was dead, and his body in its coffin was going to arrive at the Manor House to be interred in Little Shelford churchyard. At the expect time some men brought a coffin and left it in a small room near the front door, but the little house dog was extremely angry and excited, it barked and sprang upon the coffin so furiously and persistently that the servants were obliged to open the coffin to see if everything was right inside, and there they discovered a live man surrounded with burglars’ tools who evidently meant to steal when all was quiet at night. The bachelor was not dead, he came home a short time after, and he must have been very grateful to his faithful little dog.