The Lordship

The Manorial Lordship of Old Fishbourne is held by Morgan Sheldon.

About Manorial Lordships

A manorial lordship is a form of property recognised in English law, classified as an incorporeal hereditament. It can be owned, inherited, and transferred. It is not a peerage, does not confer a seat in the House of Lords, and carries no governmental authority or ownership of land.

The English manor was the basic unit of rural administration throughout the medieval period. Each manor had a lord who held rights to a manorial court, rents, and certain customary privileges. Most of those practical rights fell away over the centuries, but the lordship itself persists as a legal entity. The Law of Property Act 1922 confirmed their continuing status.

The Victoria County History

The Victoria County History of Sussex (1953) provides the most authoritative published account of the manor. It traces the descent from the Domesday tenant Engeler, through his son Turstin, to Southwick Priory, and finally to Anne of Cleves in 1540. The VCH editors noted that the subsequent descent after Anne's death in 1557 had not been traced. This is common for smaller English manors, many of which passed through private hands without generating records that survive in county archives.