A bachelor once lived at the Manor House for a short time as a tenant. He went to travel abroad leaving some servants in charge of the house, who after a while received a letter to say that their master was dead and his body in its coffin was going to arrive at the Manor House to be interred in Little Shelford churchyard.
At the expected time some men brought a coffin and left it in a small room near the front door, but the little house dog was extremely angry and excited, it barked and sprang upon the coffin so furiously and persistently that the servants were obliged to open the coffin to see if everything was right inside, and there they discovered a live man surrounded with burglars tools, who evidently meant to steal when all was quiet at night. The bachelor was not dead. He came home a short time after, and he must have been very grateful to his faithful little dog.
From A Record of Shelford Parva by Fanny Wale