The original manor house, the ancestral seat of the Babington family, was sited on the opposite side of the Kingston Brook to the existing Hall. The estate was acquired by Edward Strutt (who later became Lord Belper) in around 1840. Strutt began a very ambitious building programme which would include the Hall, the estate and the adjacent village of Kingston Upon Soar. Between 1842 to 1846 a neo-Elizabethan mansion was built by the architect Edward Blore which was occupied by Strutt in 1845. Between 1840 to 1844 the formal gardens and pleasure grounds were laid out. He also remodelled the surrounding fields. To the south of the house hedges and field boundaries were removed down to the Kingston Brook and replanted with trees to form open parkland. The Back Park to the north was also reworked in the same manner with the addition of several miles of iron park rails. Many acres of trees and shrubs were planted including bays, laurel, spruce, fir, beech, turkey oak, cedar of Lebanon and Wellingtonians. The Kingston Brook was re-routed to form a 4 acre lake complete with two islands. Contemporary with these developments was the construction of the stable block, the pavilion, the kitchen garden, hothouses and the stone lodges. The brick lodge on the Gotham Road was built in the 1850's. In 1845 the roads in the village were diverted due to their tortuous nature and the instability of the bridge over the brook. Strutt cleared the existing cottages and created a new model village of brick in the neo-Elizabethan style of the Hall. Over the next two to three years a crescent of houses was built around a communal green and a school house along the Gotham Road. By 1881 there was a Chinese summer house on the eastern margin of the lake which overlooked a small pet cemetery including miniature tombstones. In 1890 a small Grecian temple was erected in a secluded part of the grounds. The ownership of the Hall remained with the Strutt family until 1976 when Lord Belper sold the Hall to be converted into flats. (2)
See M8892 for Kingston Hall.

<1> Notts Historic Gardens Trust, 1995-1997, Notts Historic Parks and Gardens Files (Unpublished document). SNT4553.

<2> Biggadyke J, 1995, Kingston Hall - Register Review Report (Unpublished document). SNT4611.