At the Restoration, the 1st Earl extended the house; later, the 5th Earl added a Gothic exterior and an orangery, and redesigned the gardens.
The base is part of Britain’s heritage, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight formed in 1957 to commemorate the Royal Air Force's major battle honours, with a Lancaster, five Spitfires, two Hurricanes and a Dakota.
RAF Coningsby | Thomas Coningsby | George Capel-Coningsby, 5th Earl of Essex | Coningsby (novel) | Coningsby |
Clubs may limit their membership to those who meet highly specific membership requirements, for example the Coningsby Club requires that one was a member of either OUCA or CUCA, the Conservative Associations at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge respectively.
The character of Lady Jane Coningsby in the children's mystery novels, the Lady Grace Mysteries, is probably based on Jane, the daughter of Humphrey Coningsby (1516-1559) of Hampton Court in Herefordshire and his wife, Anne, sister of Sir Francis Englefield of Englefield House in Berkshire; and eventual wife of William Boughton (1543-1596) of Little Lawford at Newbold-on-Avon in Warwickshire.
Lord Hertford was the prototype for the characters of the Marquess of Monmouth in Benjamin Disraeli's 1844 novel, Coningsby and the Marquess of Steyne in William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novel, Vanity Fair.