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Founded in the late 1140s by a small community of Augustinian Canons from Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire, Lilleshall Abbey prospered through the 12th and 13th centuries with increased endowments and tithes, though financial ineptitude and the Black Death accounted for its decline in the 14th century. It was dissolved in 1538, when the Abbot and ten canons were pensioned off. The estate passed to James Leveson of Wolverhampton in 1543 whose ancestor Sir Richard Leveson unsuccessfully defended a Royalist garrison there in 1643 and the defensible parts of the abbey ruins were slighted by the Parliamentary forces. Most of the remains are 12th & 13th century, the site is grade I listed and a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of English Heritage

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