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Aston Lower Grounds

It would seem that the Grounds were purchased at the sale in 1818 and let to H Quilter. He added to the attractions year on year until 1878 when a limited company took over building further attractions. I am not sure why the caption in #4 mentions re-opening unless they had been closed for some of the building to take place.
 
In the early years of the 17th Century Sir Thomas Holte, a wealthy landowner, built a large stately home set atop of a sandstone ridge, two miles north of Birmingham Town. In the old dialect it was called Eastun (East Town, later Aston) Hall. It overlooked a shallow valley of open fields and woods complete with Old River Tame (as it's called on the 1888 map) meandering slowly northwards. In 1837 the Grand Junction Railway engineered a railway line loosely following the line of the river which lead from Birmingham to the North West. Witton railway station was thoughtfully provided next to the Hall. Sadly, at about this time, Aston Hall had deteriorated to the point that a windfall was needed to carry out substantial repairs. Finance for this was achieved by selling off a 31 acre parcel of land, (The Aston Lower Grounds) roughly triangular in shape, to a Bank. The land comprised the Hall’s vegetable and herb gardens, orchards and a large artificial fish pond.

The bank eventually leased the land to an entrepreneur, one H G Quilter. He was a bit of a visionary for his ideas were years ahead of their time. With this parcel of land he created perhaps the world’s first theme park, a hundred years before Disney, Alton Towers, etc. In 1875 he built a roller skating rink 300 feet long by 80 feet wide with a smooth asphalt floor. Alongside this, in 1879 he built a huge aquarium, 400 feet long and 60 to 80 feet wide with tanks containing fish, seals, octopus and other exotic species from around the world. The tanks required 300,000 gallons of water to be filled. On the first floor of this attraction an Art Gallery was provided. Many other attractions were built. At the southern shore of the pond a polar bear house was established and presumably appropriately populated. Around the grounds more attractions were built including a bandstand, tearooms, a rifle range, a bowling green and more menageries housing a wide range of exotic animals. At its peak the venue attracted over 280,000 visitors a year. Admittance to the grounds cost 3d and to the Aquarium 6d. The famous Victorian cricketer Dr W G Grace to play several test matches on the sports ground against an Australian eleven. FA cup semi finals were played here, and here the world’s first cycling record was set – some hero (Mr M Albin) rode around the track accruing 13 miles 600 yards in one hour on a penny farthing! Athletics also featured regularly on the red cindered track surrounding the sports field.

November 1887 witnessed arguably the pinnacle of the Lower Ground's events. Over 200 red Indians (mostly of the Sioux tribe), Mexicans, Cowboys and Rodeo Riders performed a series of Wild West shows lead by William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Annie “Get your Gun” Oakley. Buffalo, prairie elk, horses and steer featured together with the real “Deadwood” stagecoach (shipped from the USA complete with bullet holes) performing circuits and rides around the racing track surrounding the sports field. Annie Oakley performed a sharpshooting routine and two Indians got arrested for drunkenness in one of the local pubs.

Following the death of Mr Quilter in 1893 fortunes changed. Railways made travelling cheaper and people were much attracted to sea-side venues which could provide similar attractions in a more exiting and exotic setting. Quilter’s death ensured that no one took up the challenges presented by the new century and its time was over.

In 1874 a new sports club had been founded by the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel Cricket Club in Birmingham whose members yearned for some sporting activity in the winter. The first sporting event played by the new club was a rugby match against Aston Brook St Mary's Rugby Club, followed the next week by a football match. It was decided that football was the way forward. The team prospered and took on the lease of grounds at Wellington Road, Perry Barr. The club's management instigated the football league and of course the renamed Aston Villa was a founding member. By the end of the century they had won three FA cup finals and 5 league finals. This success enabled the club to buy its own ground and as the site of Mr Quilters enterprise was available it was purchased outright in 1897, the year the club won both the FA Cup and the League.

For reasons not clear Aston Villa declined to use the existing sports ground and chose instead to set out their new pitch on top of the recently drained and filled lake where it has remained ever since. The old Aquarium Building was for may years Villa's offices, gym and snooker room until its demise in the 1980’s.

Next time I go to Villa Park I'll find myself staring intently at the Holte End goalmouth and perhaps see a ghostly polar bear staring with bemusement at a 40,000 attendance instead of his lake. Or a faint image of Buffalo Bill rounding up a Range Rover in the car park, behind which two Sioux Indians are lying, hopelessly drunk.

WP
 
Whiskey Papa said:
In the early years of the 17th Century Sir Thomas Holte, a wealthy landowner, built a large stately home set atop of a sandstone ridge, two miles north of Birmingham Town. In the old dialect it was called Eastun (East Town, later Aston) Hall. It overlooked a shallow valley of open fields and woods complete with Old River Tame (as it's called on the 1888 map) meandering slowly northwards. In 1837 the Grand Junction Railway engineered a railway line loosely following the line of the river which lead from Birmingham to the North West. Witton railway station was thoughtfully provided next to the Hall. Sadly, at about this time, Aston Hall had deteriorated to the point that a windfall was needed to carry out substantial repairs. Finance for this was achieved by selling off a 31 acre parcel of land, (The Aston Lower Grounds) roughly triangular in shape, to a Bank. The land comprised the Hall’s vegetable and herb gardens, orchards and a large artificial fish pond.

The bank eventually leased the land to an entrepreneur, one H G Quilter. He was a bit of a visionary for his ideas were years ahead of their time. With this parcel of land he created perhaps the world’s first theme park, a hundred years before Disney, Alton Towers, etc. In 1875 he built a roller skating rink 300 feet long by 80 feet wide with a smooth asphalt floor. Alongside this, in 1879 he built a huge aquarium, 400 feet long and 60 to 80 feet wide with tanks containing fish, seals, octopus and other exotic species from around the world. The tanks required 300,000 gallons of water to be filled. On the first floor of this attraction an Art Gallery was provided. Many other attractions were built. At the southern shore of the pond a polar bear house was established and presumably appropriately populated. Around the grounds more attractions were built including a bandstand, tearooms, a rifle range, a bowling green and more menageries housing a wide range of exotic animals. At its peak the venue attracted over 280,000 visitors a year. Admittance to the grounds cost 3d and to the Aquarium 6d. The famous Victorian cricketer Dr W G Grace to play several test matches on the sports ground against an Australian eleven. FA cup semi finals were played here, and here the world’s first cycling record was set – some hero (Mr M Albin) rode around the track accruing 13 miles 600 yards in one hour on a penny farthing! Athletics also featured regularly on the red cindered track surrounding the sports field.

November 1887 witnessed arguably the pinnacle of the Lower Ground's events. Over 200 red Indians (mostly of the Sioux tribe), Mexicans, Cowboys and Rodeo Riders performed a series of Wild West shows lead by William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Annie “Get your Gun” Oakley. Buffalo, prairie elk, horses and steer featured together with the real “Deadwood” stagecoach (shipped from the USA complete with bullet holes) performing circuits and rides around the racing track surrounding the sports field. Annie Oakley performed a sharpshooting routine and two Indians got arrested for drunkenness in one of the local pubs.

Following the death of Mr Quilter in 1893 fortunes changed. Railways made travelling cheaper and people were much attracted to sea-side venues which could provide similar attractions in a more exiting and exotic setting. Quilter’s death ensured that no one took up the challenges presented by the new century and its time was over.

In 1874 a new sports club had been founded by the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel Cricket Club in Birmingham whose members yearned for some sporting activity in the winter. The first sporting event played by the new club was a rugby match against Aston Brook St Mary's Rugby Club, followed the next week by a football match. It was decided that football was the way forward. The team prospered and took on the lease of grounds at Wellington Road, Perry Barr. The club's management instigated the football league and of course the renamed Aston Villa was a founding member. By the end of the century they had won three FA cup finals and 5 league finals. This success enabled the club to buy its own ground and as the site of Mr Quilters enterprise was available it was purchased outright in 1897, the year the club won both the FA Cup and the League.

For reasons not clear Aston Villa declined to use the existing sports ground and chose instead to set out their new pitch on top of the recently drained and filled lake where it has remained ever since. The old Aquarium Building was for may years Villa's offices, gym and snooker room until its demise in the 1980’s.

Next time I go to Villa Park I'll find myself staring intently at the Holte End goalmouth and perhaps see a ghostly polar bear staring with bemusement at a 40,000 attendance instead of his lake. Or a faint image of Buffalo Bill rounding up a Range Rover in the car park, behind which two Sioux Indians are lying, hopelessly drunk.

WP
Click to expand...
 
The reason why Aston Villa did not take up the chance to move onto the ALG sports meadow was because it had been demolished and sold for three streets of houses some nine years previously in September 1888, ironically a week before Aston Villa's first Football League match was played at Wellington Road.
 
An aerial view of the Lower Grounds. In the Victorian period it housed a menagerie, a theatre and winter garden. Viv.

0D6D051E-C7C5-415B-9AB3-3640D045F019.jpeg
 
Post 28 shows the map, and at the end of the lower Fish Pond the Polar Bear House...

Aston Lower Grounds

Presumably the Great hall and accompanying buildings. How much nicer it looks (on the plan anyway) than a boring featureless football stadium
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
 
Vivienne14 said:
This is why I was confused about the 1872 date for the Lower Grounds. First newspaper extract is April 1859, the second is May 1864. Quilter seems to have really developed the place. Viv

View attachment 122426 View attachment 122427
Click to expand...
I came across this website when attempting a little reseach into H.G. Quilter. I wonder if it is the same gent as have a Elkington & Co Decanter engraved "PresentedIMG_0699(2).JPGIMG_0706(1).JPGIMG_0698(1).JPG to H.G.Quilter on his 50th Birthday 1874". It's been in the family many many years but we have no to connection to HGQ as far as I know. It travelled the world with my father, a career RAF Officer and came my way on his death aged 98 in Jan 2019. I only took a closer look at it because decanter fell off a shelve shattering to glass elements sadly.
 
The only H G (Henry George) Quilter I can find died in 1893 in Felixstowe. He is on the 1891 census as a hotel proprieter - listed at the Bath Hotel, Bath Road Felixstowe. He left £4100 which would have an estimated value today of around £ half a million (based on £100 being just over £13,000).
This was the probate
1620297024303.png
Charles Henry married in Birmingham in 1878 and he is listed as a hotel keeper at The Holt Hotel Birmingham.
 
In 1871 Henry George is listed on the Birmingham rates books at Aston Park (including Aston Lower Grounds) and also owing houses in Trinity Road.
In the extract below the first column is the occupier and the second is the owner, third column is what the property is. I haven't included the Trinity Road entry but he owns those properties
1620297346050.png
 
Not sure of your connection.
Charles Henry in 1901 and 1911 is the employer listed at The Crown and Anchor Hotel Ipswich (Westgate Street I think).
A bit off title but Charles married Annie Wattis, they seem to have had 2 boys before her death in 1897. He then seems to have married her sister Alice in 1899. After Charles death Alice returned to Birmingham and lived in Phipson Road Sparkhill until her death in 1946.
 
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Henry George Quilter was born around 1824 in Surrey. In 1881 he was in the bankruptcy court and living at Abington House, 77, Trinity Road. It looks like he fits the bill, and maybe he needed the money in 1881 !
 
Sale of Quilter Fine Art collection April 1875.

"Mr. Quilter has been fortunate in realising upon his most fruitful of all treasures in one case, we are told, no less than 55 times the cost of the drawing, and upon his whole collection something like 260 per cent.”
 
It doesn't look as though the pole jumpers had a very soft landing does it Viv? Very interesting to see that Mr Avery was 'Manhattan and (?) New York Timekeeper'. I wonder what LAC stands for after Mr Shearman's name?
 
I think it would be London Athletic club. The following is from https://www.playingpasts.co.uk/arti...the-conflict-between-the-north-and-the-south/ :

Athletics in London during the 1860s and 1870s was dominated by the rivalry of the London Athletic Club (LAC) and the Amateur Athletic Club (AAC).[30] Whilst the AAC was responsible for introducing accurate timing and measurement, the club was also responsible for embedding elitism into amateur athletics.[31] The beginnings of the amateur-professional dichotomy can be observed in the rules of the AAC and, more specifically, in the organisation’s definition of an amateur, which excluded anyone who had ever competed in open competition for financial gain, or had participated or assisted in athletics as a means of livelihood.[32] Further restrictions included a membership clause that barred any mechanic, artisan or labourer from competing, regardless of their being complicit or not with respect to the club’s amateur rules.[33]

In the columns of the Athletic News, the timing of the AAC’s meetings were repeatedly remarked upon by the northern paper, paying particular emphasis to the point that northern athletes faced difficulty in competing, and the newspaper petitioned for the creation of a Northern Championship. The newspaper argued that whilst the LAC’s meetings were of better quality than the AAC’s, taking place during the summer at the height of the athletic season, without consideration for their northern contemporaries, their meets could not be deemed a competitive success. In the writer’s view, ‘London is not England, and the provinces ought to be as well represented as the capital’.[34] These concerns over a lack of northern representation were justified with the championship virtually being contested only by athletes of metropolitan origin.[35] Whilst the LAC wished to be more inclusive, holding their championship event at a more reasonable time in the season, the club failed to convert their metropolitan athletic dominance into national supremacy of the sport, making the creation of a northern championship, free from the problems associated with holding the event in London, a guaranteed conclusion.
 
Researching my GG Grandfather I came across this piece. The image is similar although not exact as Viv's image at post #42 above.
Interesting that the text written post 1908 refers to Aston lower grounds as Aston cross.

JTs Penny Farthing record..jpg
 
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