Shelford priory was a small monastery founded on the south-bank of the River Trent by Ralph Haunselyn (or Hauselin) during the reign of King Henry II (1154-1189), and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

William Bardolf and Adam de Everingham took each other to court to decide who was the hereditary patron of the priory.

[1][3] On 25 March 1536 Archbishop Cranmer wrote to Thomas Cromwell asking for "the farm of the priory of Shelford" for his brother-in-law:—'I desire your favor for the bearer, my brother-in-law, who is now clerk of my kitchen, to have the farm of the priory of Shelford, or of some other house in Notts, now suppressed.

[1][3] Michael Stanhope was executed in 1552 and the estate passed from father to son: Shelford Manor was built on the former priory site c.1600.

[4] Philip Stanhope, 1st Earl of Chesterfield was summoned to Parliament in 1640 and took the side of King Charles I in the threatening conflict.

[4] The manor was described as "a fortified house surrounded by a very strong 'bulwark' and a great ditch on the outside of it partly filled with water", with mentions of a drawbridge and defensive "'half moons' within the bulwark".

[4] The house was surrounded on 1 November 1645 by forces led by Colonel John Hutchinson and Colonel-General Sydnam Poyntz.

There was a trapdoor that went into the belfry, and they had made it fast, and drew up the ladders and the bell-ropes, and regarded not the Governor’s threatening to have no quarter if they came not down, so that he was forced to send for straw and fire it and smother them out.

[10] Historian David Appleby has said that a "frenzied massacre", which may have included women and children, followed the battle, and the whole encounter was later covered up, not mentioned by either side.

Appleby suggests that the Parliamentarians wanted to forget the savagery, and the defending Royalists to hide the presence of "European Catholics" of the Queen's Regiment, who had a very bad reputation.