Robert Jenrick has besmirched Handsworth. And, despite his childhood claims, he knows little about Aston or Villa Park

Luke Perry’s ‘Forward Together’ at Aston Hall is a celebration of Birmingham’s diversity … Robert Jenrick has shown little knowledge of diversity in Aston or in Handsworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The former British Prime Minister David Cameron slipped up in a speech ten years ago when he said he supported West Ham – after a lifetime of claiming he was an Aston Villa fan.

Cameron’s uncle the late Sir William Dugdale chaired Aston Villa from 1975 to 1982. But after that faux pas Camron admitted he seldom goes to football matches and he only occasionally checks the results of his favourite team – or teams, as the case may be. It seems he knew just enough about football to know that Aston Villa and West Ham play in similar colours – claret and blue – but not enough to convince true Villa or Hammers fans that he is one of the blokes.

Now, it appears the wannabe Tory leader Robert Jenrick does not know the difference between Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers, and he does not know the difference, geographically, between neighbouring Aston and Handsworth.

All of which is very disturbing indeed considering Jenrick was born in Wolverhampton, went to school at Wolverhampton Grammar School, and claims to be an expert on cultural and ethnic diversity in Handsworth.

Jenrick fuelled a fire of toxic nationalism around the time of the Conservative Party conference in October with comments he made about not seeing another white face in Handsworth. He claimed he had spent 90 minutes in Handsworth, and thought this made him so knowledgeable about the place to tell Tories in Aldrige-Brownhills that it is ‘absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ He claimed it was not the kind of Britain he wants to live in.

To make what he said even worse, he said unashamedly, he ‘didn’t see another white face there.’

In the stormy aftermath, I tried to make some points in response, having spent a little more than 90 minutes in Handsworth during my lifetime. Indeed, there are Comberford family links with Handsworth going back to the 16th century; William Comberford (1594-1653) of Comberford Hall was baptised in 1595 in Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth, where his mother’s brother, the Revd Henry Stanford, was the Rector in 1604-1608, and members of the Comberford were still living in Handsworth in1677.

All of that was more than 90 minutes ago. Of course, none of that makes me an expert on Handsworth. But Robert Jenrick should know too that 90 minutes do not make someone an expert analyst on any topic, particularly if most of those 90 minutes are spent looking down at litter on the street or looking into a camera, rather than looking people in the face, or, even better talking to them.

Jenrick seemed to want to talk to white people only. He did not talk to or listen to anyone who was not white. What sort of human being denies the dignity and shared humanity of another person because of their ethnicity or culture? There is only one word to answer that.

Jenrick went on to say Handsworth is ‘as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ Obviously, he does not know what a true slum is like, he has never visited a real slum. But then, if he had, he could not be so slick about the words he used in his rush to judgment. Indeed, if he had ever visited some of the slums I know, and had a conscience, he would abandon his political and social opinions.

If Jenrick had bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful. Rushing to judgment without looking around you, without listening to people, without talking to them, and without respecting their lifestyle and integrity is contributing to shaping a Britain than none of us should want to emerge in the future.

But now, it emerges, Jenrick was not even in Handsworth when he made these condemnable comments on the place. He actually made his controversial comments about Handsworth when he was, in fact, walking along a street in Aston, three miles to the east.

Jenrick made his incendiary comments about Handsworth after he filmed a piece for so-called GB News about the bin strikes in February, claiming he was in Handsworth. But since then many people have pointed out since then that he was actually walking along the Broadway, close to the corner of Witton Road in Aston and close to both Aston Hall and Villa Park, the home of Aston Villa.

There is a big difference between being on the border of Aston and Perry Barr and being in Handsworth.

Of course, Jenrick’s recent comments were irresponsible and deeply flawed, regardless of where he was referring to. Birmingham, including areas like Handsworth and Aston, is a vibrant, creative, and diverse place where people from all walks of life live and work together successfully. But the geographical inaccuracy of his statement deepens concerns about what he said when the location Jenrick described as Handsworth appears to actually be Aston, it raises serious questions about the man’s credibility.

When it emerged that Jenrick’s observations about Handsworth where made when he had been in Aston, Jane Haynes, Politics and People Editor at the Birmingham Mail and Post, said it ‘makes me lol, but also very frustrated. Jenrick has no interest in, nor care for, or knowledge of Birmingham or its people, except when it fits an agenda, just as the likes of Katie Hopkins did before him.’

The Holte End at Villa Park, traditionally the home of Aston Villa’s most vocal and passionate supporters (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It is all the more gob-smacking because Jenrick not only was born and went to school in Wolverhampton, but he has also put himself forward as having expert knowledge on Aston Villa, and was vocally critical of the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending the recent Europa League tie at Aston Villa.

The shadow justice secretary says he is a Wolves fan, but when he talks about matches between Wolves and Villa, as The New World pointed out (20 October), he is reminiscing about matches he could not possibly have attended.

‘Growing up in the eighties, my dad took me to more than a few matches at Villa Park in the away end,’ he wrote on X (alias Twitter). ‘The language, chants, and antics were – at times – less than well-mannered.’

But, as New World points out, it is more than confusing to consider how Jenrick’s father could have taken the child to ‘more than a few’ Wolves away games at Villa Park. Wolves spent much of the 1980s in different divisions and played away at Villa just seven times in that decade: four times in the league, twice in the League Cup and once in the FA Cup. Jenrick was born in 1982, so for three of those games, he had not been born, and for three he was, respectively, two months, one year and two years old.

The only Wolves away game in the 1980s that he could possibly have attended and have any memory of was when Villa defeated Wolves 2-1 in the then Littlewoods Challenge Cup in September 1989, when Jenrick was seven.

Was Stuart Gray’s 63rd minute winning goal for Villa so memorable that Jenrick has convinced himself it happened countless times? But still, give me a rest: one game in 1989 is hardly ‘more than a few matches at Villa Park’ in the 1980s.

If Jenrick’s visits to Villa Park were so memorable, how did he not realise when he was on Broadway, close to the corner of Witton Road, that he was in Aston and close to Villa Park, and not in Handsworth?

And if ‘the language, chants, and antics’ at Villa Park ‘were – at times – less than well-mannered’, why did he not learn a lesson or two when it comes to talking about Aston and Handsworth?

If Jenrick’s visits to Villa Park were so memorable, how did he not realise that he was in Aston and not in Handsworth? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Robert Jenrick is an uncritical admirer of Trump and more than once has called for an election pact with Farage. He has made a name for himself pursuing alleged fare dodgers on the London Underground. But he needs to show a little more honesty himself. He has not apologised yet for his descriptions of Handsworth, as far as I know, nor has he explained why and how he conflated Aston and Handsworth, and whether it was a mistake or he did this on purpose.

For most men, our loyalties and allegiances to teams are fastened in our childhood and teen years, and to change them as adults feels like an act of desertion or betrayal. I became a supporter of Aston Villa in my late teens because Villa Park was the nearest statdium to Lichfield.That was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some years before David Cameron’s uncle chaired Aston Villa, and long before, as he would want us to believe, Robert Jenrick’s father took him to matches in Villa Park.

When Aston Villa beat West Ham 3-2 two weeks ago (14 December), did David Cameron know how to look for the results in the papers the next day?

When Villa beat Wolves 1-0 a month ago (30 November), did Robert Jenrick know about it?

When Aston Villa plays Arsenal later this evening, I know who I shall be cheering for. After 11 victories in a row, I’m hoping Villa can produce a result like the last match against Arsenal: and in case Cameron and Jenrick don’t know, it was 1-0 for Villa at home on 6 December.

If Robert Jenrick bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Are we in danger of ignoring the 14 signs of the rise of fascism in the US and Britain?

Standing against fascism on the streets of London almost 90 years ago … the Battle of Cable Street on Sunday 4 October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The choice of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is particularly apt. It comes after a month of constant bombing by the Trump regime of fishing boats in Caribbean waters simply because they fly the flags of Venezuela and Colombia, without supporting evidence for the excuses given and in violation of international law.

I do not agree where María Corina Machado stands on many political issues, nor am comfortable with many of her social values and views. But deomcracy is not democracy if it is not also for those democrats I do not agree with. If you want regime change, then María Corina Machado shows how to do it peacefully, unlike the Trump regime.

Trump is huffing and puffing. He thinks he has brought peace to the Middle East, and, honestly, I truly hope that in some way he has. But if peace arrives, it has been long overdue.

I am reminded of the epigram by the Roman historian Tacitus in his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola: ‘They make a desert and call it peace’. It is part of a speech by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, in which he condemns the Roman invaders, saying they ‘ravage, slaughter, and usurp under false titles; and that ‘where they make a desert, they call it peace’ – ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant – and it remains a critique of imperialism and the nature of violent conquest.

We may have peace, of sorts, in Middle East, but the hostages have yet to return to their families, much of Gaza is still going to remain occupied, the people of Gaza have been given no hope for either democracy or housing, and Gaza has been turned into a desert that is going to remain without peace for decades, if not generations.

Perhaps the real reasons any agreement has been reached in recent days is because Nethanyahu overstepped the mark when his planes bombed Qatar and tried to take out the Hamas negotiators. Without Qatar has a broker, and without anyone in Hamas left to talk to, the Middle East faced the prospect of a catastrophe close to Armageddon-like proportions.

I am sure too that the coalition parties that have supported Nethanyahu fear the generational consequences of the criticism they face from the families of the hostages, and were warned that continued in havoc and devastation in Gaza have become a contributing factor – not matter how illogical and offensive that is – in the rise of antisemitism.

Trump’s demands for the Nobel Prize are petulant and, as if he couldn’t get any lower – debasing. This is the man who claims the wars he has ended include a war between ‘Aber-baijan’ and Albania, although there is no such place as ‘Aber-baijan’, and he may have been referring to Azerbaijan and Armenia. Nor have Serbia and Kosovo or Egypt and Ethiopia recently gone to war, the border exhanges between Cambodia and Thailand never amounted to war and Malaysia was the mediator, the agreement between Rwanda and DRC signed in the White House, and both Pakistan and India, like Serbia and Kosovo, deny Trump every played a role in their negotiationss.

Trump’s promise was to end Russia’s war against Ukraine a key pledge in his re-election failed. The war continues relentlessly, nor has he ever renounced his desires to annex Greenland or even Canada. Meanwhile, war is being glorified and the Defence Department has been relabelled the War Department



Trump's obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize has taken internation attention away from the reality that rvery hour in every day brings yet another event in the White House or on the streets of towns and cities in the US that everone of us ought to find shocking. Here are 14 example of what has happened In the past week or two:

1, we have heard Trump in the White House admit he is taking away freedom of speech in defiance of court rulings;

2, government has been shut down and the Democrats are being blamed, even though the Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House;

3, Trump has called for the arrest of the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois, local politicians are being arrested by ICE on the streets, at press conferences and in hospitals, without warrants and without IDs;

4, a Presbyterian pastor, the Revd David Black, was shot in the head in Chicago by ICE agents who then laughed to one another;

5, congressional electoral boundaries are being redrawn to fix the elections next year;

6, funding is being withdrawn capriciously from universities and academics are being denied permission to leave the US, in a parallel of the old Soviet way of denying exit visas;

7, racial profiling is now being used in making decksions about who to detain;

8, armed and masked men refuse to identify themselves as they lift people off the streets, family homes are being raided and families being broken up, and children don’t know where their parents are;

9, allies are traduced and betrayed, enemies are rewarded, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been humiliated while Putin has been feted;

10, people who are legally resident in the US are being deported to countries they never heard of and never lived in, or missing and unaccounted for, with no-one in charge being answerable or caring about these lost human lives;

11, troops have been deployed on the streets of Chicago, Washington DC, Portland and Memphis against the people they are supposed to defend and in defiance of locally elected state authorities;

12, pressure is put on television channels to sack comedians, journalists are being expelled from the White House press pool, and those who have tried to make Trump accountable legally in the past, including the former FBI director James Comey and the Attorney General of New York Letitia James, are being pursued through the courts with weaponised fraud charges;

13, the spectre of a non-existent organisation, Antifa, has been created and labelled ‘terrorist’ when there is no such organisation and the word simply means ‘anti-fascist’;

14, Pete Hesgeth has been shown to draw inspiration from and to plagiarise the speeches of Goebbels …

It is only a few years since any one of these events on any one day would have made headline news in newspapers and on major television news shows across the world. Had so many things happened in such a short span of time a few years ago in a small country in Central America or Latin America, there would have been sanctions or even a US-led invasion.

Have we become inured to what is happening in the US? We are no longer shocked or surprised. It is no longer headline news. And what comes out of MAGA mouths was parroted and mimicked by speaker after speaker at both the Reform and the Conservative party conferences in recent weeks.

If Robert Jenrick bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Robert Jenrick fuelled a fire of toxic nationalism after he doubled down during the Conservative Party conference this week on his comments about not seeing another white face in Handsworth. He spent, on his own admission, all of 90 minutes in Handsworth, but thinks he’s so knowledgeable about the place to tell Tories in Aldrige-Brownhills that it is ‘absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ He claims it’s not the kind of Britain – or Britian if you’re eating Badenoch-branded chocolate – he wants to live in. To make what he said even worse, he said unashamedly, he ‘didn’t see another white face there.’

There are some points I tried to make on Facebook earlier this week in response:

1, 90 minutes do not make someone an expert analyst on any topic, particularly if most of those 90 minutes are spent looking down at litter on the street or looking into a camera, rather than looking people in the face, or, even better talking to them.

2, Jenrick seems to want to talk to white people only. He did not talk to or listen to anyone who was not white. What sort of human being denies the dignity and shared humanity of another person because of their ethnicity or culture? There is only one word to answer that.

3, Jenrick thinks Handsworth is ‘as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ Obviously, he does not know what a true slum is like, he has never visited a real slum. But then, if he had, he could not be so slick about the words he spouts out in his rush to judgment. Indeed, if he had ever visited some of the slums I know, and had a conscience, he would abandon his political and social opinions.

4, And Jenrick came with prejudice in the sense of pre-judging what to expect: if he bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful. Rushing to judgment without looking around you, without listening to people, without talking to them, and without respecting their lifestyle and integrity is contributing to shaping a Britain than none of us should want to emerge in the future.

Jenrick has described himself as an ‘Anglofuturist’. But Hope Not Hate, the anti-racist think-tank, has shown how Anglofuturist accounts on social media are full of AI-generated images moon bases emblazoned with the Union Jack, giant spaceships hovering over Westminster, and Maglev trains zooming through green and pleasant countryside.

Beneath the surface, however, some of the most prominent advocates in the Anglofuturist movement are deeply racist. The Hope Not Hare analysis of Anglofuturism raises awkward questions for Jenrick – who hopes soon to lead the Conservative Party – and the movement as a whole.

MAGA ideas have infected British politics. We can expected them to inspire Reform and their far-right partners painting flags on roundabouts, protesting outside hotels that house huddled and frightened asylum seekers, and waving their flags through the streets of London. But it is sad indeed how they have also become acceptable within one of the mainstream political parties. One Nation Tories are now very thin on the ground indeed, and figures such as Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), Dominic Grieve and Andy Street seem to have become lone voices in their own party.

Standing against fascism … part of the mural at Saint George’s Town Hall commemorating the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said this week, ‘No one should be surprised that Donald Trump is employing fascist tactics – prosecuting his opponents, weaponising the federal government and attacking the very fabric of our democracy.’

Writing in the Guardian today, the former Prime Minister Gordon Browne says the rise of Reform UK has parallels with the rise of the hard right in 'in every one of Europe's major countries and from India and Thailand to the US and Argentina, and the examples he cites from across Europe include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia.

But if democrats -- left, right and centre -- are going to unite to defeat the rise of this new fascism, it is important to ask: what is Fascism, and what is Anti-Fascism?

In a paper ‘Fascism Anyone?’ in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry, Lawrence Britt outlines 14 characteristics of fascism.

Britt studied the fascist regimes in many places in the 20th century, including Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Suharto in Indonesia, the colonels in Greece and Pinochet in Chile. He found they had 14 elements in common, which he calls the identifying characteristics of fascism.

A similar list is based on his political novel June, 2004 about an authoritarian government in the US under a Republican administration. The book was published in 1998, while the list is found in an article published in 2003.

Britt’s 14 characteristics of fascism are:

1, Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism

2, Disdain for the importance of human rights

3, Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause

4, The supremacy of the military/avid militarism

5, Rampant sexism

6, A controlled mass media

7, Obsession with national security

8, Religion and ruling elite tied together

9, Power of corporations protected

10, Power of labour suppressed or eliminated

11, Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts

12, Obsession with crime and punishment

13, Rampant cronyism and corruption

14, Fraudulent elections

The Italian philosopher and author, Umberto Eco (1932-2016), is best known in the English-speaking world for his popular novel The Name of the Rose (1980). He also wrote extensively on fascism. In his essay ‘Ur-Fascism’ or ‘Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt’ (Il fascismo Eterno, or Ur-Fascismo), first published in 1995, Eco provided an analysis of fascism and a definition of fascism, discussed the fundamental characteristics and traits of fascism, and out forward some principles by which we can recognise fascism today.

He too identified 14 characteristics of fascism:

1, The cult of tradition: ‘One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.’

2, The rejection of modernism: ‘The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.’

3, The cult of action for action’s sake: ‘Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.’

4, Disagreement is treason: ‘The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.’

5, Fear of difference.: ‘The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.’

6, Appeal to a frustrated middle class: ‘One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.’

7, The obsession with a plot: ‘The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.’

8, The enemy is both strong and weak: ‘By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.’

9, Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy: ‘For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.’

10, Contempt for the weak: ‘Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.’

11, Everybody is educated to become a hero: ‘In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.’

12, Machismo and weaponry: ‘Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.’

13, Selective populism: ‘There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.’

14, Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak: ‘All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.’

I can identify most of the 14 traits on both lists in the behaviour of the Trump regime and some right-wing politcians in the UK.

How many can you identify in speeches at the Reform and Conservative party conferences?

Meanwhile, as Charlie Kirk is being transformed into the Horst Wessel of the MAGA movement, I can imagine that somewhere in an attic in America or in an hotel room in England, a young girl is hiding, writing a diary.

Soho Square and the origins of a name and a family motto: are hunting links no more than myths?

Soho Square at the heart of Soho in London’s West End … but where does the name comes from? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Before having a bad tumble on Oxford Street last week, when I ended up in the A&E unit in University College Hospital London on Euston Road, I had spent some time in the Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and Soho area, looking for old churches and buildings of architectural interest.

I have been in Gerrard Street and Chinatown before, and I first stayed in an hotel off Oxford Street back in 1970 or 1971. But I had never really got to know Soho.

Of course I knew of Soho as a centre for the theatre and music industries and its seedy reputation in the past as a centre for the sex industry, prostitution and night clubs that featured regularly in salacious reports in tabloid pressarchi from the 1950s on.

I knew of Soho too in lyrics from hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Kinks (‘I met her in a club down in old Soho / Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola’) and the Who (‘Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve played the silver ball / From Soho down to Brighton, I must’ve played ’em all’) to Shane Macgowan and the Pogues singing ‘Rainy Night in Soho’ in 1990:

I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms.

Soho is a much different area in recent years, to a degree. Many parts of it have been gentrified, with attractive cafés and restaurants, hotels and bars, theatres and music studios, although there is still a whisper everywhere of its recent salacious past.

Soho was a part of the ancient parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, forming part of the Liberty of Westminster.. But Soho never was an administrative unit with formally defined boundaries. It is about a square mile in area, and is usually considered to be bounded by Shaftesbury Avenue to the south, Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, and Charing Cross Road to the east. The area to the west is Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east Saint Giles and Covent Garden, and to the south Saint James’s.

The ‘Tudorbethean’ mock ‘market cross’ building at the centre of Soho Square was built in 1926 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Soho Square in the centre of Soho has been a public square effectively since 1954 when it was transferred by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King’s Square to honour Charles II.

But the name of Soho goes back long before King’s Square became Soho Square.

I have long been interested in the origins of the name Soho, wondering whether its etymological origin has any connection with the motto with slight variations on most Comerford coats-of-arms and that has long escaped a credible explanation or translation: ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne.’

Most accounts say the name of Soho derives from an English 16th-century hunting cry ‘So-Hoe’ when the area was open fields and grazing land. There are also places called Soho near Handsworth in Birmingham, once a part of Staffordshire, and New York and Hong Kong, although the name of Soho in New York is an acronym for South of Houston Street.

The history of Soho as we know it today does not begin until after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was originally a royal park used for fox and hare hunting. The fire destroyed two-thirds of London, creating in a huge demand for new housing. Soho quickly went from open fields to an fashionable residential location.

Immigrants began to settle in the area from around 1680 onwards, particularly French Huguenots after 1688, and the area became known as London’s French quarter. Greek Street was first laid out around 1680 and was named after a nearby Greek church. The early Irish residents included Arthur Annesley, 5th Earl of Anglesey, and Peter Plunket, 4th Earl of Fingall, and later Josiah Wedgwood ran his main pottery warehouse and showrooms there.

Building work in Golden Square, Gerrard Street and Old Compton Street began in the 1670s and Soho Square itself was laid out in 1681. When building began on Soho Square in 1681, one of the first residents was the Duke of Monmouth, one of the many illegitimate sons of Charles II. The square had become known as Soho Square by 1720, and when John Rocque drew his keynote map of London in 1746, the name of Soho Square had replaced King’s Square.

Monmouth House in Soho Square, built for the Duke of Monmouth, later became the French ambassador’s residence, but was demolished in 1773.

Soho Square was still close to the countryside in the late 18th century. Speakers of the House of Commons had houses in the square and a number of foreign embassies were there, including those of France, Russia, Spain and Sweden. But, between 1778 and 1836, the square was also home to the infamous White House brothel at the Manor House, 21 Soho Square.

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele wrote of their character Sir Roger de Coverley in The Spectator, saying, ‘When he is in Town he lives in Soho-Square.’

By the mid-18th century, the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved away to more fashionable areas such as Mayfair. By the 19th century, they had been replaced by prostitutes, brothels, music halls and small theatres.

In A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens has Lucie and her father, Doctor Manette living on Soho Square. It is believed that their house is modelled on the House of Saint Barnabas, and so the name of Rose Street was changed from Rose Street to Manette Street. Golden Square is mentioned by Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby, and Ralph Nickleby has a house on the square.

Robert Louis Stevenson had Dr Henry Jekyll set up a home for Edward Hyde in Soho in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Soho was badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. John Snow’s study of the outbreak was significant in the history of epidemiology and public health. He mapped the addresses of the sick and noted that they were mostly people whose nearest access to water was the Broad Street pump.

Many small restaurants and cafés sprang up in Soho in the 19th century, particularly as a result of Greek and Italian immigration.

Soho Square has two churches, Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, partially on the site of Carlisle House, and the French Protestant Church, as well as the House of Saint Barnabas, which closed last year. Saint Anne’s Church on Wardour Street was built in 1677-1686. Nearby, the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Gregory on Warwick Street was built in 1788 and is the only remaining 18th-century Roman Catholic embassy chapel in London.

At the centre of Soho Square is a listed mock ‘market cross’ building, built in 1926 to hide the above-ground appearance of an electricity substation. It is a small, octagonal, rustic gardener’s shed with black-and-white, timber framing, a steep hipped roof and a squat upper storey with jettying, supported by timber columns. It incorporates 17th- or 18th-century beams and its style has been described as ‘Tudorbethan’.

The much-weathered statue of Charles II was carved in 1681 by the Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber. It became the centrepiece of the square, set on a pedestal above a fountain and basin, with four figures representing four rivers, the Thames, Severn, Tyne and Humber.

In time, the fountain ceased to function, the basin was filled, and eventually the statue was removed In 1875 during alterations in the square by Thomas Blackwell, of Crosse & Blackwell, the food firm then based at 20-21 Soho Square.

Blackwell gave the statue to a friend, supposedly, for safekeeping, and it was absent for many decades, stashed away as a private garden feature in a country house. It was returned to Soho Square in 1938, although the garden was not restored and opened to the public until 1954.

Cibber’s statue of Charles II, sculpted in 1681, was returned to Soho Square in 1938 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The name Soho dates from at least 1632, but ‘So Ho!’ has been used as a hunting cry from perhaps the early 1300s. It was used in calling from a distant place to alert hounds and hunters when a hare had been sighted, similar to the use of ‘Tally Ho!’ in fox hunting – when a fox breaks cover and ‘soho!’ is the cry when the huntsmen uncouple the dogs.

Various dictionaries say ‘soho’ was a synonym for ‘tally-ho’, and the the word ‘soho’ as a call by huntsmen to direct the attention on the dogs or of other hunters to a hare that has been discovered, or to encourage them in the chase. Soho in London developed on an area that had been a royal park once associated with hunting and the area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park.

Interestingly, the Duke of Monmouth used ‘Soho!’ as a rallying cry for his troops at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the final battle in his rebellion. But the name Soho or So Hoe was in use for the area at least 50 years before the Duke of Monmouth led his troops with the battle cry.

Will Noble, editor of the website Londonist, wonders whether the link between the hunting cry ‘So Ho’ and the name of Soho is little more than an ‘unsubstantiated urban myth’. He dismisses as ridiculous another theory that Soho is an abbreviation of South of Holborn, pointing out that, in fact, Soho is to the west of Holborn.

Walter Thornbury discussed another cry theory in the Victoria County History in 1878. He suggested that ‘soho’ might come from ‘the footpad’s slang of the 16th century, when the fields were lonely at night, and divers persons were robbed in them.’ Footpads were the equivalent of highwaymen on foot, but there is nothing to substantiate Thornbury’s claim.

There are many other Sohos, SoHos and SOHOs around the world, from Malaga to Buenos Aires and Beijing, and all seem to take their name from Soho in London.

There is another Soho in Handsworth, which was once in Staffordshire but has been subsumed into Birmingham. The name of this Soho is said to come from an inn sign on Soho Hill that depicted a huntsman with the word ‘Soho!’ coming from his mouth. Other sources suggest Soho in Handsworth takes its name from a map reference to a building called South House, abbreviated as ‘So. Ho’. But it is also possible that the name was taken from Soho in London. Soho is now part of Handsworth and the name is used primarily with reference to the long and linear shopping centre along Soho Road.

As Will Noble writes, ‘the sketchiness of our Soho’s etymology is part of what makes this place so special.’

The Dog and Duck in Soho … the pub signs are a reminder of Soho’s hunting past (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The motto ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne’, with variations in spelling, has been used in the heraldry of the Comerford and Comberford families from at least the early 17th century. Any attempts to translate, explain or interpret the motto have always been inadequate, and it remains inexplicable. But the motto may relate to the presence of a talbot or hunting dog in the Comberford arms, which in turn may be associated with the arms of the Wolseley family, though the colouring is inverted. A similar hunting dog can be seen today in places in Soho, including the ‘Dog and Duck’ on the corner of Bateman Street and Frith Street.

The coincidence of the ‘So Ho …’ motto and the talbot in the Comberford and Comerford coats of arms may have been associated with the imaginative myth, repeated in Joseph Comerford’s fantastical pedigree in 1724, that ‘Roger de Comberford of Staffordsh[ire] came into Ireland with King John & was Great Master of the Game.’

The origins of the name of Soho in London seem less difficult to unravel than the origins of my family motto.

The motto ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne’ has been used in Comberford and Comerford coats of arms since the early 17th century (Photo collage: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

How Saint Mary’s Church in Handsworth has links with the Industrial Revolution … and the Comberford family

Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth, also known as Handsworth Old Church, is sometimes described as the ‘Cathedral of the Industrial Revolution’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in Birmingham last week, after finding the tomb of William Holte in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church in Aston, with its early depiction of a Comberford coat-of-arms, I decided to walk from Aston to Handsworth, where Saint Mary’s Church is associated with some members of the Comberford family through intermarriage with the Stanford family.

The Stanford and Comberford families were among the leading ‘conforming Catholic’ families in Staffordshire, and in the post-Reformation decades in the second half of the 16th century, the River Tame was like a Tudor motorway, providing easy access between the Comberford and Stanford manors in Wednesbury, Handsworth, Perry Barr, Kingsbury, the Moat House in Tamworth and Comberford Hall.

Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth, also known as Handsworth Old Church, is a Grade II* listed building beside Handsworth Park, formerly Victoria Park, and is close to the Birmingham Outer Circle.

The church is sometimes described as the ‘Cathedral of the Industrial Revolution’, and Saint Mary’s is the burial place of key figures in the Industrial Revolution in Birmingham and the Midlands, including James Watt, Matthew Boulton and William Murdoch, members of the Lunar Society.

Handsworth was originally in the Diocese of Lichfield until it was transferred to the Diocese of Birmingham, and it was in Staffordshire until it was transferred to Warwickshire and became part of Birmingham in 1911.

The west end of Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth … the church dates back to at least 1160 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Despite its strong connections with the Industrial Revolution, the earliest parish register for Saint Mary’s begins in 1558, and the church dates back to at least 1160. The Manor of Handsworth is even older and existed since Saxon times, so there may have been an earlier timber church in Handsworth.

The first stone church on the site of Saint Mary’s was built ca 1160, when a priest was recorded in Handsworth. It was a small and austere Norman structure, filling about half the site of the present south aisle. The few surviving Norman features of the church can be seen at the lower stages of the sandstone tower at the east end of the original church.

Saint Mary’s Church was enlarged in the 14th century. The tower, which has six bells, is in the decorated style of the reign of Edward III, like the other remaining parts of the ancient fabric. In the chancel are two effigies of members of the Wyrley family, and an ancient piscina.

William de Wirleia was Rector of Handsworth in 1228, and remained there until he died in 1247. He is the earliest recorded member of the Wyrley family in Handsworth.

The tower of Saint Mary’s Church, which was enlarged in the 14th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

All the manors in Handsworth were held by a single succession of overlords in the early Middle Ages. William FitzAnsculf held Birmingham, Edgbaston, Aston, Erdington, Witton, Handsworth, Perry Barr and Little Barr in 1086. His successors were lords of other manors in Aston parish – Bordesley, Little Bromwich, Duddeston, Saltley and Nechells – that were first named in the 12th or 13th century. The estates and Dudley Castle passed to the Paynel family, and from them to successive members of the Somery family until John de Somery died in 1322.

The Somery family shared their interests in Handsworth Manor with the Parles family, whose estates and wealth were eventually inherited by an heiress Anne Parles, who married John Comberford (ca 1440-1508), of Comberford Hall, who was a Justice of the Peace and MP for Staffordshire 1502-1508. John Comberford’s sister Margaret married William Holte (ca 1430-post 1498).

As for the Somery family, when John de Somery died in 1322, his co-heirs were his sisters: Dudley and the manors of Birmingham, Perry Barr and Little Barr went to Margaret, wife of John de Sutton, while Handsworth Manor, Edgbaston Manor and the manors in Aston parish went to Joan, widow of Thomas Botetourt.

Handsworth Manor then passed through the Botetourt and Beauchamp families to Joan Beauchamp’s son, James Butler (1420-1461), 5th Earl of Ormond, who was beheaded as a Lancastrian in 1461. Butler’s estates and interests were recovered eventually and in time passed to his youngest brother, Thomas Butler (1426-1515), 7th Earl of Ormond – grandfather of Anne Boylen – and from him to his daughter Lady Anne Butler (1455-1533) and her husband Sir James St Leger, and to their grandson John St Leger in 1519.

John St Leger sold Handsworth Manor in 1555 to Sir William Stanford (1509-1558), Justice of Common Pleas and MP for Stafford and Newcastle-under-Lyme. He consolidated his links with Staffordshire by buying the neighbouring Manor of Perry Barr and Manor of Handsworth, which he bought from Sir John St Leger, who had inherited the estate through his descent from James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond.

Sir Robert Stanford (1540-1607), succeeded to Handsworth Manor and Perry Barr, and built Perry Hall in 1576 (Image: Lost Heritage)

Stebbing Shaw in his History of Staffordshire (vol 2, p 108) says Sir William Stanford married Elizabeth Comberford, a daughter of Thomas Comberford (1530-1597) of Comberford Hall and Wednesbury and his wife Dorothy, daughter of William Wyrley of Hampstead in Handsworth. However, most authorities agree William’s wife was Alice Palmer, daughter of John Palmer of Kentish Town, Middlesex.

Shaw appears to have confused her with a much later Elizabeth Comberford who married William Stanford of Packington, a first cousin twice removed of the judge. This Elizabeth Comberford was a daughter of Thomas Comberford (1472-1532) and Dorothy Fitzherbert; she was a sister 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 William Stanford of Handsworth and Handsworth and Anne Palmer were the parents of six sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Sir Robert Stanford (1540-1607), succeeded to Handsworth Manor and Perry Barr, and built Perry Hall in 1576.

Robert Stanford’s eldest son, Edward Stanford, who succeeded to Handsworth Manor and Perry Hall in 1607, was a witness to a Comberford family deed in 1599 signed by William Comberford of Tamworth and his brothers John Comberford and Thomas Comberford. Edward Stanford died in 1632 and was succeeded in turn by his son William Stanford.

One of Sir Robert Stanford’s daughters, Mary, married Humphrey Comberford, on 30 January 1591. Humphrey Comberford died at Comberford during his father’s lifetime, and he was buried in Saint Editha’s, Tamworth, on 6 August 1609.

William Comberford (1594-1653) was baptised in 1595 in Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth, where his mother’s brother, the Revd Henry Stanford, was the Rector in 1604-1608 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Mary (Stanford) and Humphrey Comberford were the parents of five sons and four daughters. Their eldest son, William Comberford (ca 1593/1594-1653), was born ca 1593/1594, and was baptised on 8 February 1594/5 in Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth, where later his mother’s brother, the Revd Henry Stanford, son of Sir William Stanford, was the Rector in 1604-1608.

William Comberford inherited Comberford Hall 1611, and his grandfather William Comberford died in 1625. At the Visitation of Warwickshire he was described as ‘de Cumberford et Kingsberrow’ or Kingsbury, Warwickshire, a reference to his interest in one-ninth of the manor of Mancetter within the Parish of Kingsbury.

When his grandfather died in 1625, William Comberford as his heir succeeded to the Comberford family estates. But he did not take possession of them as the bulk of the estates, including the Moat House in Lichfield Street, Tamworth, and the Manor of Wednesbury, had been leased in trust by his grandfather to his uncle William Comberford.

William Comberford died in 1653, perhaps at the Marshalsea in Southwark. Although he asked in his will to be buried in the Comberford family vault in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, it appears he was buried at Saint George the Martyr, Southwark.

William Comberford’s next brother, the second son of Mary (Stanford) and Humphrey Comberford, was Robert Comberford (ca 1594-1671) of Comberford Hall, the last of the senior line of the family to live at Comberford Hall, although his widow Catherine (Bates) continued to live there until she died in 1718.

The fourth son of Mary (Stanford) and Humphrey Comberford, John Comberford (ca 1597-(ca 1666), lived in Handsworth, until he inherited Wednesbury after the death of his eldest brother, William Comberford, in 1653. After settling ‘all my lands in Wednesbury’ on trustees, he appears to have paid off the outstanding debts on the estate and sold it ca 1656 to a distant cousin, John Shelton of West Bromwich. John Comberford’s will is dated 1657, but he was still living in 1664, and died ca 1666.

A daughter of Mary (Stanford) and Humphrey Comberford, Elizabeth Comberford, also lived in Handsworth. She is named in the wills of her brothers William and Robert Comberford, and she died ca 1677.

Meanwhile, Sir Henry Gough bought Perry Hall in 1669, and it stayed with the Gough and Gough-Calthorpe family many generations.

The churchyard at Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth, has many graves of local historical importance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Until the Industrial Revolution, Handsworth was a large rural parish with a population widely dispersed in farms and cottages. As a Staffordshire country church placed at the convergence of several cross country tracks, Saint Mary’s became a significant place in the life of Birmingham as it developed into the largest industrial city in Britain.

James Watt (1736-1819), who lived in Handsworth, is remembered as the inventor of the steam engine. Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) applied his engineering talent in 1774 to Watt’s ideas, and Boulton and Watt became leading figures in the Industrial Revolution. William Murdoch (1754-1839), another engineer, became a partner of Boulton and Watt. He perfected gas lighting and the high-pressure steam engine. All three have monuments in the church.

James Watt was buried in the grounds of Saint Mary’s, but when the church was rebuilt and enlarged in 1820, his tomb was inside the church. A groined chapel was designed by Thomas Rickman and built over Watt’s tomb On the south side, and includes a white marble statue of Watt by Francis Legatt Chantrey.

More factories followed, and Handsworth continued to expand throughout the 19th century. This growth was further encouraged by the arrival of the railway, with stations opening at Handsworth in 1837 and Perry Barr in 1854.

From 1860 to 1873, the Revd Herbert Richard Peel, a nephew of Sir Robert Peel MP, was the Rector of Handsworth. To accommodate the growing population, Saint Mary’s was expanded in 1870, and several new churches were built in the parish, including: Saint John’s, Perry Barr (1833), Saint James’, Handsworth (1838-1840), Saint Michael’s, Handsworth (1855), Holy Trinity, Birchfield (1864), Saint Paul’s Hamstead (1892-1894), and Saint Andrew’s, Handsworth (1909).

The site of Handsworth Rectory is now the large pond in Handsworth Park (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Handsworth Rectory was sold in 1891, was demolished in the 1890s and the site later became the large pond in Victoria Park, now Handsworth Park.

As for Perry Hall, built in 1576 by Sir Robert Stanford, the father of Mary (Stanford) Comberford, it had been abandoned as a family residence by 1919. 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, Perry Hall was demolished in 1931, and the stables and the last remaining lodge were demolished in 1935. The site of the house and estate is now Perry Playing Fields is and the boating pool is part of the former moat of Perry Hall.

Saint Mary’s churchyard includes the graves of two key figures in the story of football: William McGregor, a director of Aston Villa who called the founding meeting of the Football League in 1888, and George Ramsay, whose headstone reads ‘Founder of Aston Villa’. Harry Freeman, the popular music hall performer, was buried there in 1922. But the graveyard is overgrown and it is difficult to find the graves.

Webster Booth (1902-1984), largely remembered for his singing duets with Anne Ziegler, was a member of the choir of Saint Mary’s as a child. He was seen as one of the finest tenors of his day.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Handsworth (Image: HandsworthParish website)

Today, Saint Mary’s is part of the Handsworth Group and describes itself as a warm and welcoming Church with a diverse and growing congregation. The worship aims to be dignified but inclusive and is of a moderate catholic flavour, using incense on the Principal Feasts.

• Sunday services are: 8 am, Holy Communion (Book of Common Prayer, 1662); 11 am, the Parish Eucharist (Common Worship, 2000), the principle service in the parish and a sung service. Morning Prayer is said every Friday at 8:30, and there is Daily Prayer following Common Worship in the Church Hall.

The churchyard lychgate on Hamstead Road in Handsworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Aston Hall, the stately home near Villa Park, is a fine example of a Jacobean prodigy house

Aston Hall, a Grade I listed Jacobean house in Aston, is one of the finest examples of a Jacobean prodigy house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full-screen views)

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.

Aston Hall was built between 1618 and 1635 … the Holte family was living at Aston since the 14th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

Sir Thomas Holte (1571-1654), who built Aston Hall … a portrait in the Great Hall in Aston Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

The Long Gallery in Aston Hall is 136 ft long (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

The King Charles Chamber where the king stayed when he visited Aston Hall before the Battle of Edgehill in 1642 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

The hole in the staircase at Aston Hall where a Parliamentarian cannonball went through a window and an open door, and into the banister (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

The coat of arms of the Holte baronets in the Long Gallery at Aston Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

Sir Lister Holte and Sir Charles Holte as young boys … a painting in Aston Hall of the baronet brothers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

The Great Dining Room in Aston Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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.

In the gardens at Aston Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)