The village name 'Lillingstone' is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'Lytel's boundary stone', referring to the proximity of both places to the border with Northamptonshire.

In the Domesday Book of 1086, both settlements were recorded jointly as Lillingestan though already at that time there were two manors owned respectively by the Dayrell and Lovell families.

[2] The parish church of Lillingstone Dayrell is dedicated to St Nicholas of Myra.

In 1882, the banker Abraham John Robarts, of Robarts, Lubbock & Co., then the tenant of Lillingstone House, built Tile House in the village for himself, designed by Ewan Christian.

This is described by Nikolaus Pevsner as “Neo-Elizabethan, big and forbidding with groups of huge chimneys.”[3] In 1961 the parish had a population of 121.