Foxton had, of course, existed as a manor in the pre-Conquest Saxon period. A manor was an area of land granted to a local Lord - hence 'Lord of the Manor'. Asgar* and Sigar* are referred to in Domesday Book* as having been Saxon lords of Foxton Manor, and Sigar in fact continued to hold the Manor of Foxton after the Conquest, although his overlord was no longer Asgar (who died at Hastings) but Geoffrey de Mandeville*, to whom the land had been granted by King William.
The land held by the Abbesses of Chatteris* was granted to them directly by the Crown, and did not count as ordinary manorial property.
The third manor may have been held by the Bancs family. Mabel Bancs became Abbess of Chatteris, when much of the Bancs land was given away. In 1260 this manor passed to the Mortimer family from Attleborough in Norfolk, and when in 1263 their manor at Kingston was burnt and laid waste, they built a new manor house at Foxton inside the old moat, a site which still carries the Mortimer name.