This wet moorland provided protection for pre-Roman Celts living between 300BC and 100AD near the hill fort at the now small settlement of Wall 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Donnington.

A map of Shropshire by John Speed from 1610 refers to Donnington as Dunnyton, the ending ington meaning in Anglo Saxon "Dunny's homestead or farm".

Over 400 years later the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII ended centuries of church dominated society and the land was purchased in 1539 by James Leveson, a Wolverhampton wool merchant and was then passed down his family's inheritance to eventually become part of the Duke of Sutherland's estate.

At the same location there was, as shown on an Ordnance Survey map from 1833, Donnington railway station with freight and passenger connections to Wellington and Stafford; this was closed as part of Beeching cuts in 1964.

Only 2,000 feet (600 m) 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's Leveson ancestors (whose Lilleshall Ironworks was one of the first blast furnaces in the West Midlands).

The Telford International Railfreight Park (TIRF), opened in 2009 has been 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.