Donnington, Telford

Coordinates: 52°42′54″N 2°26′10″W / 52.715°N 2.436°W / 52.715; -2.436

Donnington shown within Telford in Sky Blue.

For other places named Donnington, see: Donnington

Donnington is located in the borough of Telford and Wrekin and ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. Aside from the rest of urban Telford, which is to the south west, Donnington is surrounded by fields and countryside.

History

The original Donnington village was to the north east of the current centre of Donnington and was under the Duke of Sutherland's estate. It was a minor industrial centre where "Walker's works" (C&W Walker Ltd) iron works produced components of gasometers and ship's engines. The Clock Tower restaurant commemorates the landmark Walker's Clock which now sits on a road island near where "Walker's works" once was and just a hundred metres north from the centre of the original village of Donnington. Only 600 yards further north, at The Humbers, iron-making is thought to have taken place since the late 16th Century, with the name 'Humbers' deriving from a set of water-driven ‘hammers’ which in 1580 were owned by the Duke of Sutherland (whose Lilleshall Ironworks was one of the first blast furnaces in the West Midlands). The Hammers were located on or near the site of a mill on Lubstree Pool,^[1] which before the dissolution of the monasteries had belonged to the Canons of the nearby Lilleshall Abbey.

More recently Old Donnington was the location of a coal wharf linked by rail to the Granville Colliery, Shropshire's last deep coal mine. This mine tapped into the Donnington Wood coalfield (where most of the local coal and ironstone reserves are located and which once came to the surface where it was mined in the 18th Century at Donnington Wood). In 1818 the Lilleshall Company began sinking a number of deep mines around Donnington Wood, extracting over 400,000 tons of coal a year from the area by 1871. This industrial heritage links the original Donnington village to the Industrial Revolution that Telford proudly asserts began with the first large scale smelting of iron using coke in the Coalbrookdale area of Telford.

MoD Donnington

The current centre of Donnington is actually the centre of New Donnington, a housing development that began in the late 1930s to house the workers who would be employed at the then new Donnington British Army Ordnance Depot. The farm land for the New Donnington housing estate was purchased by the War Office, later part of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

MoD Donnington is a military logistics base located immediately to the north of Donnington. The site was chosen in 1936 as a replacement for London’s Woolwich Arsenal and designed to provide employment in what was then a depressed area, following the closure of the Lilleshall Company’s New Yard engineering works in St Georges several years earlier. At the turn of the millennium further investment took place as Parsons Barracks (named after Major-General Sir Harold Parsons) and Venning Barracks (named after General Sir Walter Venning) were developed.^[2]

In March 2014 there was reason for local optimism that MoD Donnington would once more be radically expanded with another 500 to 700 jobs being added to the 1,000 jobs that MoD Donnington currently requires.^[3] The expansion plans were approved early that month.^[4]

In November 2014 Venning Barracks became headquarters of the newly-formed 11th Signal and West Midlands Brigade, formed by the amalgamation of 11th Signal Brigade who were already based here since 1992, and the hitherto Shrewsbury-headquartered 143rd (West Midlands) Regional Brigade.^[5]

In February 2015 it was announced by the MoD that in preference to Bicester Donnington would be the venue of choice for the preferred bidder, a business consortium led by US company Leidos, to establish a central defence storage hub for the United Kingdom.^[6]

Retail

Recently Donnington has added an Asda superstore and an Aldi supermarket to the Coop supermarket that already existed and a Morrisons supermarket has replaced the Netto supermarket in the centre of Donnington on the site of the old pub "The Champion Jockey". With additional other Asda and Morrisons stores plus Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose nearby and also several nearby towns, Donnington is one of the best food retail-served suburbs in the country.

The Telford International Railfreight Park has been recently developed on a 48 acres (0.19 km²) site formerly part of the MOD depot, given rail access by rebuilding 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of the former Shropshire Union Railway west towards Wellington. It is expected this development will attract more light industry to the industrial estates near Donnington.

Donnington is home to a small amateur dramatics company "The Little Theatre" and each year Donnington football playing fields play host to a popular free Guy Fawkes fair and bonfire night.

External links

• The Little Theatre, Donnington
• Along the Moors - Donnington - C&W Walkers Ltd

See also

• Donnington Wood
• Muxton

References