Terry Gillings, 61, and his wife Caroline, 54, have spoken about what they will do with the life-changing sum
£1Million Lottery Winners Trevor and Caroline Gillings(Image: Alan Peebles Photography)
A County Durham builder and his wife have decided it’s family first with life-changing plans for their £1M Lotto Win. For Terry Gillings, 61, and his wife Caroline, 54, family is everything and setting up their four daughters for life with their win, knowing they will each have their own home, is a dream come true.
For the Stanley couple and the extended family, the win is the high of a very emotional rollercoaster that saw them say hello to their £1M Lotto win and goodbye to Terry’s dad in the space of just two days.
Terry said: “We’ve always worked hard and helped our kids where we can but this is a whole other level – surely it’s every parent’s dream. We decided pretty much straightaway that we wanted the girls to benefit from our luck.
“I’ll never forget phoning our daughters to tell them that their mortgages were being paid off, it generated quite a bit of screaming and joy.”
Terry, who cared for his 85-year-old dad through prostate cancer and Parkinson’s disease, did manage to tell his father the news before he passed. He said: “I told dad we’d won a million and, true to character, his first words ‘P*** Off, don’t lie to us!’
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“I like to think knowing Caroline and I, and the girls, were all well set-up for the future meant he slipped away more peacefully. My dad always said celebrate the wins, that’s exactly what we intend to do and I’ve enjoyed telling everyone I’ve bumped into since that we’ve won!”
Despite the celebrating, and demonstrating an admirable work ethic, come Monday morning Terry was back on-site building an extension.
Terry explains: “I’ve been a builder since I left school, I can’t really imagine stopping now. I built our dream home seven years ago so I may take a break from building for clients for a bit and instead get to work with a mate building a couple of houses on a plot we invested in years ago but didn’t have the cash at the time to get on with the build. Just like that, we have.”
The couple will also be making a donation to Breast Cancer Awareness, a cause sadly close to their hearts. Terry says: “We lost my mum to breast cancer, my sister has had treatment, our daughter has recently undergone a double mastectomy and I have been advised that I carry the gene.
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“We’ve had our share of bad luck and hopefully by donating some of our win we can help other families to be luckier when it comes to this horrible disease.”
A little further afield, Terry is an avid and experienced breeder of some critically endangered species of birds, such as the Bali Myna. Thanks to the win, he is planning a trip with Caroline to Indonesia to hopefully spot one of only 54 still living in the wild.
There’s also talk of a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru, somewhere Terry saw in photos but never dreamt he would visit in person. Like his dad before him, Terry has always played Lotto each week since the game started.
His winning Lotto numbers on Wednesday 26th March, 2025 were: 14, 17, 18, 22, 34 and 58.