With work beginning on improvements to the M1 junction 23 at Loughborough as part of massive development plans for the Garendon Park estate, we thought we’d take a look back at the mansion which used to grace the area.

Garendon Hall, once one of Leicestershire’s finest grand houses, stood in its own parkland between Loughborough and Shepshed.

It had an imposing façade with a grand portico of fluted Ionic columns.

The extensive park was laid out with an obelisk, temple and a triumphal arch.

Originally the site of one of the earliest Cistercian monasteries, founded in 1133 by the Earl of Leicester, a grand house was built in the 17th century and adapted with architectural features by successive generations of the Phillips de Lisle family.

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The front of Garendon Hall before it was demolished in 1964
The front of Garendon Hall before it was demolished in 1964

Garendon’s gradual mish-mash of changing architectural styles, incorporating everything from Palladian, Gothic and French influences, brought it plaudits and brickbats in equal measure.

Famous architectural historian Dr Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that the hall was “very fine” but later additions were “really rather horrible”. 

Inside the derelict Garendon Hall before its demolition in 1964
Inside the derelict Garendon Hall before its demolition in 1964

Yet Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli described it as being of “the finest style of Christian architecture... of great extent and richly decorated”.

During the Second World War, the house was requisitioned by the Army, which left it in a rather sorry state, unfit for further habitation.

It remained empty and forlorn and, with the death of Garendon’s owner, Ambrose Paul Jordan March Phillips de Lisle in September 1963, its downfall was assured.

It was knocked down the following year with members of the fire service even being called in to set fires inside to aid the demolition process.

Firefighters breaking windows at derelict Gardendon Hall, near Loughborough, in 1964 to help fires take hold in the building as it was being demolished
Firefighters breaking windows at derelict Gardendon Hall, near Loughborough, in 1964 to help fires take hold in the building as it was being demolished

The dramatic photographs of Garendon’s demise, above and top, were taken by the Mercury’s Loughborough Monitor photographer Syd Hall, on May 13, 1964.

He commented: “All was set with a small fire inside and everyone waited, but no major fire seemed likely until the firemen threw stones at the windows, through which the wind soon assisted the fires, to everyone’s relief.”

Rumour has it that rubble from the building was even used as hardcore during the construction of the nearby M1.