Patrick Comerford
Aston Hall, a Grade I listed Jacobean house in Aston, Birmingham, is one of the finest examples of a Jacobean prodigy house. It sits in a large park, part of which became Villa Park, the home ground of Aston Villa since 1897. From the lofty hill-top position of Aston Hall, there are clear views of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, the parish church of Aston, and of Villa Park, which is less than 200 metres away and stands on part of the former grounds of Aston Hall.
Aston Hall was designed for Sir Thomas Holte by the architect John Thorpe (ca 1565-1655) and was built between 1618 and 1635. Thorpe designed many important houses in his time, including Charlton House, London, Longford Castle, Wiltshire, Condover Hall, Holland House, Kensington, Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Audley End, Essex.
Sir Thomas Holte moved into Aston Hall in 1631, and the house was completed in April 1635. The Holte family was highly influential as one of the great families in Warwickshire who were involved in the county’s political and economic life throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.
I visited Aston Hall last week when I was visiting Villa Park. I was particularly interested in the Comberford family links with the Holte family of Aston Hall, and also wanted to see Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church in Aston, and Saint Mary’s Church in nearby Handsworth, which also has Comberford family links.
The Holte family lived at Aston Hall for almost 200 years and owned vast swathes of property dating back to the 14th century. The family name may be traced back to John de Holte (ca 1255-1317) and his grandson, Simon de Holte, who bought the Manor of Nechells in 1331 through a fortune he made in the wool trade.
Simon was the great-grandfather of John Holte (ca 1400-ca 1470), who inherited Aston Manor from his uncle William Holte and married Margaret Delabere of Kynardsley, Herefordshire.
John Holte’s son, William Holte (ca 1430-post 1498) of Aston, a merchant of the staple whose name occurs twice in the Rolls of Parliament. William Holt married Margaret Comberford, daughter of William Comberford (ca 1403/1410-1472) of Comberford Hall, Staffordshire. William Holte’s father-in-law, William Comberford, was MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme (1442-1447) and MP for Staffordshire (1449-1450). Margaret (Comberford) Holt was still living in 1477, and her husband was still alive in 1498.
When William Holte died, his estates were inherited by his eldest son, also William Holte (ca 1460-1514), who married Joanna Knight of Shrewsbury. When this William Holte died in 1514, he was buried in the north aisle of Saint Peter and Paul Church, Aston. The altar tomb with his life-size effigy is the oldest remaining monument of the family. He is clad in a suit of mail armour, a surcoat covering the upper part of his body; his hands are joined prayer, his head rests on a helmet, and at his feet is a resting lion.
His tomb displays one of the early examples of an image of the Comberford coat-of-arms. The front of the tomb is divided by buttresses into four compartments, each with a cinquefoil panel. In each panel, crowned and robed winged angels hold heraldic shields charged with these arms: 1, Holte impaling Knight, for William’s wife Joan; 2, singly Delabere, for William’s grandmother, Margaret Delabere; 3, Holte impaling Comberford, for William’s parents; and 4, de Wolvey.
William Holte’s son, Thomas Holte (ca 1490-1546), who was MP for Warwick, added several hundred acres from adjoining manors to his estates, and was steward of the manor of Birmingham. He died at Duddeston on 23 March 1546 and he too was buried at the parish church in Aston.
Thomas Holte’s son, Edward Holte (ca 1542-1593) married Dorothy Ferrers (ca1540-1594), a daughter of John Ferrers of Tamworth Castle, drawing the Holte family further into the nexus of important families in north Warwickshire and south Staffordshire.
Dorothy and Edward Holte were the parents of Sir Thomas Holte (1571-1654), who built Aston Hall. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, went on to buy the manors of Lapworth and Bushwood in Warwickshire, and bought the lay rectory of Aston in 1599.
With an annual income of almost £2,000 a year, Thomas Holte was one of the leading landowners in Warwickshire and was the High Sheriff in 1599-1600. He was knighted by James I in 1603 and was given the tile of baronet on 25 November 1611.
Holte began building Aston Hall in April 1618. He chose a hill-top site that was visible for miles around, looking down on Aston and the parish church. The hall took 17 years to build and is one of the finest examples of Jacobean architecture in England. The Long Gallery in Aston Hall is 136 ft long … compare this with the Long Gallery in the Moat House, the Comberford townhouse on Lichfield Street in Tamworth, which is about 53 ft long.
During this time, Holte married Grace Bradbourne of Hough, Derbyshire. They were the parents of 15 children but Grace died before Aston Hall was completed in 1635, and never lived in the house.
Thomas Holte later married Anne Littleton, who was almost 40 years his junior. She was a daughter of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton Hall, and a sister of Walter Littleton of Eccleshall, who married Alice Comberford, a daughter of John Comberford of Wednesbury and a niece of Humphrey Comberford of Comberford Hall, Canon Henry Comberford, Precentor of Lichfield, and Richard Comberford, sometimes (confusingly) identified as the ancestor of the Comerford family of Co Kilkenny and Co Wexford.
Sir Thomas Holte was reputedly a mean and vindictive man. His quarrel with his oldest son, Edward, lasted almost 20 years and involved King Charles I himself.
Edward Holte had gone to London in 1619, and in time he became a senior and influential courtier as a groom of the King’s Bedchamber. Against his father’s wishes, Edward married Elizabeth King, daughter of John King, Bishop of London, but a woman without prospects or money. When Edward was disinherited by his father, King Charles I intervened and wrote to Sir Thomas in August 1627, ordering him to restore Edward. Thomas grudgingly made a marriage settlement but made it clear that Edward could expect no more.
The king summoned Sir Thomas before him in 1631 to explain matters. The father convinced the king that he had other financial pressures that included building Aston Hall, and these family matters would be settled later. Instead, however, he made his younger son George his heir. Edward, who was heavily in debt, agreed to this and in return Sir Thomas paid off Edward’s debts of £5,000.
King Charles accused Sir Thomas of going back on his word and summoned him before a Privy Council where he was ordered not to leave London.
King Charles visited Aston Hall in 1642, at the start of the English Civil War, and stayed there for two nights before the Battle of Edgehill, a visit that ensured he had Sir Thomas’s support. After many more years of feuding and petitioning, and the untimely death of George Holte, Edward was still not reinstated as heir. In the end, Edward died before Sir Thomas and so would never have become the second baronet.
Sir Thomas Holte wrote to Colonel Leveson, the royalist governor of Dudley Castle, asking him to garrison Aston Hall. A detachment of 40 musketeers fortified the house, sending a clear message that Sir Thomas Holte was supporting the King.
Sir Thomas defended his house when the Parliamentarians paced cannons and artillery in the parkland to the south of Aston Hall. The house was severely damaged in the Roundhead attack and some of the damage is still visible, including a hole in the staircase where a cannonball went through a window and an open door, and into the banister.
Aston Hall fell to the Parliamentarian forces on the third day of the siege, and Sir Thomas Holte was taken into custody, ‘without a shirt to shift him’. Although he was not kept a prisoner for long, his estates were confiscated on two occasions while his royalist activities were investigated before he finally paid a fine of £4,491 2s 4d.
The damage to the Great Stairs was left as a badge of honour, a reminder to later generations of the role the house and family played in the Civil War.
Sir Thomas outlived all but one of his children, his daughter Grace, and he died in 1654 atthe age of 83. His widow Anne Littleton, who was 40 years younger than him, later married Charles Leigh, and died on 2 November 1697.
Thomas Holte’s children did not succeed him, and the estate was inherited by his grandson, Edward Holte’s son, Sir Robert Holte (1625-1679), as the second baronet.
He transformed the south front of Aston Hall in the 1650s. The projecting porch and bays were demolished leaving a more symmetrical and fashionable façade and disguising the damage suffered during the bombardment. After the Caroline restoration, he was elected an MP for Warwickshire in 1661.
The third baronet, Sir Charles Holte (1649-1729), was also an MP for Warwickshire. He eventually cleared the Holte family’s debts through careful management and the estates flourished once again.
Sir Lister Holte (1720-1770), fifth baronet, was only nine when he inherited Aston Hall and the family title. At 18 he married Lady Anne Legge (1705-1740), the daughter of his guardian, the Earl of Dartmouth. But she died tragically of smallpox in Aston Hall eight months later. At 21, he was elected an MP for Lichfield (1741-1777), where he had bought the market tolls for £400 for the benefit of the city and contributed £100 towards building a new market house, beside Saint Mary’s Church.
Although Lister and his brother Charles once sat in parliament together, they had been driven apart by quarrels over money, marriage and inheritance and were never reconciled. Sir Charles Aston (1721-1782), had been an MP for Warwickshire (1774-1780) and succeeded to Aston Hall and the title as the sixth baronet.
The family title died out in the male line with the death of Sir Charles Holte in 1782. Mary Elizabeth Holte, who married Abraham Bracebridge, was the last direct family member. Heneage Legge (1788-1844), a son of George Legge, 3rd Earl of Dartmouth, inherited the estate in 1794 under the terms of Sir Lister Holte’s will. But the estate was broken up under an Act of Parliament in 1817 to satisfy the competing interests of various claimants, including Abraham Bracebridge’s creditors and Sir Lister Holte’s legatees, including the Legge family, the Earls of Dartmouth, and the Digbys of Meriden.
Greenway, Greaves, and Whitehead, a Warwick banking firm, bought Aston Hall and Park and leased the Hall to James Watt jr, a son of James Watt, inventor of the steam engine and a member of the Lunar Society. Watt lived at Aston Hall until he died in 1848.
The American writer and diplomat Washington Irving (1783-1859), visited Aston Hall and later wrote about it as Bracebridge Hall, taking the name of Abraham Bracebridge, husband of the last member of the Holte family to live in the house.
The house was bought by the Aston Hall and Park Company in 1857 as a public park and museum, and the grounds were opened by Queen Victoria in 1858.
Selina Powell, known as ‘Madame Genevieve’ and ‘the female Blondin’, died accidentally during a high-wire act at a fête in 1863. Queen Victoria was not amused. She wrote to the Mayor of Birmingham, Charles Sturge, to express her dismay ‘that one of her subjects – a female – should have been sacrificed to the gratification of the demoralising taste … for exhibitions attended with the greatest danger to the performers.’
The company ran into financial difficulties, and the tragedy and poor management led to the closure of the pleasure grounds in 1864. Birmingham Corporation then bought Aston Hall and the grounds for £35,000. It was the first time a major historic building was acquired by a local authority in order to ensure its survival.
For a few years from 1879, Birmingham’s collections of art and the Museum of Arms were moved to Aston Hall after a fire damaged the municipal public library and Birmingham and Midland Institute.
Birmingham Corporation was having financial troubles in the 1920s, and had to choose between saving Aston Hall and nearby Perry Hall. Aston Hall was saved, and in 1927-1934, the Birmingham Civic Society laid out formal gardens that included fountains, terracing and stone urns and a statue of Pan by William Bloye.
The Pageant of Birmingham, with 10,000 performers, was staged in the grounds in 1938 to celebrate the centenary of Birmingham becoming a borough.
Aston Hall was renovated extensively in 2006-2009. The house and park were managed by Birmingham City Council until 2012. Aston Hall is now a community museum managed by Birmingham Museums Trust and is open to the public during spring, summer and autumn months. The park is listed Grade II.
