Qualla: Aston Hall

Aston Hall: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Rob, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a hole in the staircase. Visitors who climb the great oak stairs at Aston Hall pass it without noticing - a roughly circular wound in the banister, plugged but never disguised, on the inner curve of the flight. It was made by a cannonball in 1643, fired by Parliamentary troops attacking the house in the early years of the English Civil War. The shot came through a window, passed through an open door, and lodged in the wooden banister of a staircase that had been completed only eight years earlier. Sir Thomas Holte, the owner, was a royalist; King Charles I had stayed at Aston Hall in October 1642, on the eve of the Battle of Edgehill. The Parliamentarians knew which house belonged to which side. The cannonball mark is left visible by deliberate choice, the only kind of historical commemoration that requires no plaque to explain itself.

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Image: Ian Rob | CC BY-SA 2.0

Aston Hall: Sir Thomas Holte's Prodigy House

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. Aston Hall was built between April 1618 and April 1635, to a design by John Thorpe, for Sir Thomas Holte. Holte was a baronet of comparatively modest means by the standards of the Stuart aristocracy, but he chose to build the kind of house known as a prodigy house - a vast, osten...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Aston Hall: Charles I, Edgehill, and the Cannonball

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. On 22 October 1642 Charles I arrived at Aston Hall on his way south from Shrewsbury to confront the Parliamentary armies. Edgehill, the first major engagement of the English Civil War, was fought the next day at the southern end of Warwickshire. The king's overnight stay at Aston...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Aston Hall: Washington Irving's Bracebridge

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. After the Holtes came various tenants, including James Watt Jr., son of the steam-engine pioneer James Watt, who leased the house in the early nineteenth century. Around 1818 the American writer Washington Irving spent time at Aston Hall and was so struck by the place - and by th...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Aston Hall: The First Municipal Country House

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. In 1858 the Aston Hall and Park Company Ltd, a private concern, bought the house with the intention of running it as a public park and museum. The company struggled financially, and in 1864 the Birmingham Corporation acquired the property outright - making Aston Hall the first hi...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Aston Hall: Villa Park, Parkruns, and the Aston Expressway

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0. Part of the original Aston Hall park became Villa Park, the home ground of Aston Villa Football Club. The stadium now stands less than 200 yards north of the hall, the floodlights visible from the upstairs windows. In 1972 the easternmost part of the grounds was taken for the A38...

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Image: Philip Halling | CC BY-SA 2.0