Following the Norman Conquest, the Maltravers family held the village for about 300 years, until the
Black Death reduced the population in the second half of the 14th century. The surviving villagers deserted the original village, sited around the church and manor house, and resettled further up the hill. The remaining female heir to the title "in abeyance",
Eleanor Maltravers, inherited the title on the death of her sister, Joan, in or after 1376. She married
John FitzAlan, 1st Baron Arundel on 17 February 1359. The estate was later bought from the Arundels by the Trenchard family, who demolished the former manor house and built a new one that incorporated, amongst other facilities, a ballroom and a tower. When the Trenchard family foundered in 1829, the manor passed to the Dillon family who added the name Trenchard to their own. However, the newly titled Dillon-Trenchards chose not to occupy the newer manor house. The Dillon-Trenchards left Lytchett Matravers in the latter part of the 20th century.In 2005 mr R G Horlock took on the Lordship of Lytchett being one of the only surviving relatives of sir John maltravers. Lytchett Matravers has developed over the 20th century from a settlement of mostly scattered cottages with large
curtilages to a village with a moderately high housing density. In the 1920s and 1930s there was some
ribbon development on the main access road. This continued into the 1950s with the addition of small scale infill housing behind. Since the 1970s development has mainly been through
housing estates. In the 1960s and early 1970s many of the original
cob and
thatch cottages were either demolished or greatly altered, but there are still 13 thatched cottages in the village, some of which retain their original curtilage. Recently some modern developments have included a smattering of thatched houses in an acknowledgement of the local
vernacular architecture. ==Governance==