Donington Hall house estate Castle Donington Leicestershire England airline BMI bmibaby Gothic style Park Parkland landscaped
This is an illustration from ‘Picturesque views of Scots of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland’ Donington Hall is a house and residual 1,100-acre ( km2) estate in Castle Donington, North West Leicestershire, located close to the city of Derby. The Hall serves as the headquarters for airline BMI and the subsidiary bmibaby. The house was built from c 1790 for Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira, (created Marquess of Hastings in 1816) in a fanciful Gothick manner by the plasterer and draughtsman William Wilkins. From 1902 Donington was the property of the Gillies Shields family. The hall was requisitioned at the start of World War I by the British government and turned into a prisoner of war camp. In 1915 Gunther Plüschow, a German pilot, made the only successful escape of either world wars from Donington. In 1931 the then owner of the Donington Hall estate, Alderman John Gillies Shields JP, agreed to allow Fred Craner to use the extensive roads on his land for motor racing so creating the Donington Park circuit. The circuit at Donington Park was closed in 1939 due to World War II, when it was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and was converted into a military vehicle depot and storage area. With the whole estate needing extensive renovations after the war, the family rented the estate out as farm land. They retained the Hall, which after the Soviet Army ensured a Communist regime in Hungary, became a refugee camp for those who came to the East Midlands. A letter to the Daily Telegraph from the Gillies Shields and Joyce Pearce thanked all those who were providing clothing, books and toys for the children, promising that once the immediate crisis was over, it was their intention to turn Donington Hall into “a home and school for children of all nationalities who now live without hope in the displaced persons camps in Germany, their parents were our allies, their sufferings caused through loyalty to our cause.”
Size: 3483px × 2555px
Photo credit: © SOTK2011 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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