Lowesby Hall
Stained glass windows survive in All Saints Church, Lowesby, showing the coats of arms of Burdet, Ashby (Argent, a lion rampant sable a chief gules) Zouche of Lubbesthorpe and other related families.
[9] The ancient parish church survives in its entirety, 200 metres to the south-east of Lowesby Hall, and 450 metres to the north and east of Lowesby Hall survive extensive village earthworks, showing the foundations of houses and lanes, a strip of well preserved ridge and furrow ploughland and three large dry fishponds, all classified in 1978 as a Scheduled Monument.
[13] He had two sons Josiah and John (died 1692), who in 1669 purchased from Thomas Johnson a house at Wormley in Hertfordshire then occupied by their father Richard.
The Treasury Records contain the entry: "£140 paid to John Wollaston for the use of his father Richard on a/c of £10,000 part of £20,000 lent the King, and a further £50 on a/c of Poll Tax".
[20] He was an "active and zealous"[20] Tory politician and a member of the Pitt Club, and served as President of the Leicestershire Architectural and Archaeological Society.
"A man of great stature and commanding aspect his remarkably abstemious habits through life ensured for him the enjoyment of robust health".
[28] Lowesby Hall was eventually let by the Fowke family, which moved at some time to Upcott Farm in the parish of Bishops Tawton in Devon,[29] to many subsequent tenants as a residence during the hunting season.
Malcolm Bullock, MP, was killed while hunting with the Quorn Hounds from Hungarton, having caught her head on a low archway, and her body was returned to Lowesby Hall.
[32] On his father's death in 1934 he moved to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire and sold Lowesby to Sir Edmund Keith Nuttall, 2nd Baronet.
He and his wife had been keen riders and foxhunters in Cheshire and their new home was in the heart of England's premier fox-hunting country, in which pursuit they became fully engaged, a local newspaper reporting in February 1936: "Sir Keith and Lady Nuttall made their debut as host and hostess at a Leicestershire meet yesterday when the Quorn's biggest following for several seasons assembled at Lowesby Hall".
[34] He was killed during the Second World War, whilst serving as Lieutenant Colonel with the Royal Engineers, having been wounded in the retreat to Dunkirk,[35] and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his only son Sir Nicholas Nuttall, 3rd Baronet (1933-2007), then eight years old.
[36] He held a famous party at Lowesby Hall in 1959 to celebrate the restoration of a painted ceiling by Antonio Verrio (later destroyed by fire in 1980).
[18] In 1968, then serving as a Major and in command of the Guards Independent Parachute Regiment, he quitted the Army to take control of the family firm, following the death of his mother.
In 1978 he sold the family firm to the Dutch company Hollandsche Beton Group and sold Lowesby Hall and his other estate at The Elms, Thorpe Satchville[37] in Leicestershire, to become a tax exile in Gstaad, Switzerland, and in the Bahamas,[38] where he became an important campaigner for marine conservation, and founded the Bahamas Reef Environmental Educational Foundation (BREEF), which transformed local attitudes to maritime conservation.
[41] He is a significant philanthropist and through his charity the David Wilson Foundation has been a leading donor to the University of Leicester's £12.6 million heart research centre at Glenfield Hospital.
