Dennis Williams
Gone but not forgotten
Never been to this place. Shame on me, I know. Will do the candle light Carol thing soon, promise...here's a piece by Vivian Bird, circa 1989...
In Aston Hall, now a museum and art gallery, is Birmingham’s jewel in Jacobean style, once the manor house of the lords of the Manor of Aston. An inscription above the door puts the visitor in the picture before he even crosses the threshold of the hall. Building, it explains, was begun in 1618 by Sir Thomas Holte, knighted as one of the delegates who welcomed James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, and created a baronet in 16I2 - a dignity which meant he had to maintain thirty soldiers in Ulster at a cost of £1,000. Sir Thomas moved into Aston Hall in 1631 and completed the building in 1635.
Of all the Holtes whose portraits hang at Aston, Sir Thomas is the dominant figure, and nowhere more than in the kitchen with its splendid spit and unwieldy box mangle, for it was in his previous kitchen at Duddeston Manor that Sir Thomas was said in 1606 to have split his cook's head with a cleaver, so that one half fell on his left shoulder and one on his right. Though Sir Thomas won a libel suit concerning this, when he added the badge of baronetcy, the Red Hand of Ulster, to his coat-of-arms, there were those who said it represented his own hand, bloody from the deed.
In 1624 Sir Thomas violently opposed the marriage of his heir, Edward, to Elizabeth King, daughter of the Bishop of London, and, though Charles I intervened on the side of the couple, Sir Thomas was still opposed to his son when Edward died in 1643 at the siege of Oxford. December of that year brought Aston Hall's most exciting episode when Birmingham Cromwellians attacked it for three days before Sir Thomas and his Royalist garrison gave in. He was heavily filled and imprisoned by the Commonwealth party, twelve of the defenders were killed in the fight, and damage from cannon balls to the balustrade of the great staircase is today a visual reminder of the engagement.
Sir Thomas had fifteen children by his first wife, Grace Bradbourne - Grace abounding - and none by his second, Anne Littleton of Pillaton, near Penkridge. The story is only legendary that Anne disliked one of her step-daughters and persuaded Sir Thomas to lock her up until she went mad. Mr. Ronald Healey, supervisor of Aston Hall, told Vivian Bird: "This daughter is supposed to be our ghost, the White Lady. I have been here thirty years, but I have never seen her. My outstanding memory is of the grace and beauty added to the Long Gallery by Princess Alexandra when she had tea there in 1958."
Princess Alexandra is not the only royalty to have visited Aston Hall. Charles I slept there two nights in 1642 just before the Battle of Edgehill, and today King Charles's Room with his bed is directly off the Great Drawing Room. Queen Victoria declared the hall and grounds open to the public by the Aston Hall and Park Company in 1858, and she was not amused when, in 1863, a 'female Blondin' fell to her death there from a tightrope during a money-raising fete. The Queen's disapproval, and her shock that the place she had inaugurated was not yet paid for, jerked Birmingham Corporation into paying off the remaining £19,000 in 1864.
A frieze of animals in the entrance hall at Aston includes a prominent elephant, the crest of the family of James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, whose son, the younger James, leased Aston Hall in 1818. For all its visual charm and faithful reproduction of periods in its history, Aston Hall comes most alive through the people who have lived there - plus one who merely hangs on the wall of the Great Drawing Room, the intriguing Elizabeth, Lady Monson, daughter of Sir George Reresby. A verse in gold incorporated in the frame of her portrait begins:
“Did not a certain lady whip,
Of late her husband's own lordship?”
Seemingly she "Ty'd him naked to a bedpost", and "clawed him with fundamental blows" - an exhibition having much in common with modern films, but arising, I understand, from a conflict of political loyalties.
One way and another, poor William, Viscount Monson, had a rough passage - and maybe he deserved it, being partly instrumental in the execution of Charles I. He was stripped of his honours at the Restoration, and drawn on a sledge by ropes round his neck from the Tower to Tyburn and back, before being imprisoned in the Tower for life.
Sir Thomas Holte died in 1654. Because his estranged eldest son, Edward, and all his other sons had pre-deceased him, he was succeeded by his grandson, Robert, who became an M.P. - and a prisoner in the Fleet debtor's prison. Nevertheless, the first of his two marriages, to Jane Brereton of Brereton Hall, Cheshire, brought this property to the Holtes in 1722. Meantime, the third baronet, Sir Charles, had restored the family fortunes, while his daughter, Mary, was stitching the famous hangings and the carpet bearing the Holte arms.
The fourth baronet, Sir Cloberry Holte, married a Barbara Lister, of whom he later wrote: "She is seldom at home, or satisfied when she is there." So he left her only £10. She married again, and Sir Cloberry's mother thought her a bad influence, allowing her to spend only two weeks each year with her sons at Aston. Despite three marriages, the elder of these sons, Sir Lister Holte, remained childless, and the succession passed to his brother Charles, the sixth and last baronet, who never lived at Aston Hall, as his wife and Lister's widow, Sarah, were always at loggerheads.
Sir Charles had only one daughter, Mary Elizabeth, and no sons, so the direct Holte line died. Mary married Abraham Bracebridge of Atherstone, and on a bedside table in the Victoria Room at Aston Hall - with its tantalising glimpse of a corner of the playing pitch at Villa Park - is a copy of Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall. The American writer often stayed in Birmingham with his relatives, the Van Warts, and Bracebridge Hall is partly inspired by Aston Hall. The break-up of the Holte estates is a complicated business, arising from Abraham Bracebridge's failure in the soap trade, and a partition of the estates in several counties to satisfy his creditors and Sir Lister's legatees, including the Legge family - the Earls of Dartmouth-and the Digbys of Meriden.
In 1818 a Warwick banking firm, Messrs. Greenway, Greaves, and Whitehead, bought Aston Hall and leased it to James Watt, who lived there until he died in 1848. In that year most of the 300 acres of surrounding parkland was sold for building; and the remainder of a herd of deer dispersed. Afterwards Birmingham Corporation began to take an interest in the hall and what was left of the park. So the Holte line has ended, and today their mansion re-echoes to the hurrying feet of schoolchildren pursuing
social studies. But I believe the Holte crest has lived on and become widely known in the Midlands, though none suspect its origin. This is the squirrel trademark of Ansell's Brewery - a more recent Aston landmark than the hall - acquired in 1934 by Ansell's along with Holt's Brewery of Aston, who used it on their seal as long ago as 1896, though they were not related to the Holtes.
In Aston Hall, now a museum and art gallery, is Birmingham’s jewel in Jacobean style, once the manor house of the lords of the Manor of Aston. An inscription above the door puts the visitor in the picture before he even crosses the threshold of the hall. Building, it explains, was begun in 1618 by Sir Thomas Holte, knighted as one of the delegates who welcomed James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, and created a baronet in 16I2 - a dignity which meant he had to maintain thirty soldiers in Ulster at a cost of £1,000. Sir Thomas moved into Aston Hall in 1631 and completed the building in 1635.
Of all the Holtes whose portraits hang at Aston, Sir Thomas is the dominant figure, and nowhere more than in the kitchen with its splendid spit and unwieldy box mangle, for it was in his previous kitchen at Duddeston Manor that Sir Thomas was said in 1606 to have split his cook's head with a cleaver, so that one half fell on his left shoulder and one on his right. Though Sir Thomas won a libel suit concerning this, when he added the badge of baronetcy, the Red Hand of Ulster, to his coat-of-arms, there were those who said it represented his own hand, bloody from the deed.
In 1624 Sir Thomas violently opposed the marriage of his heir, Edward, to Elizabeth King, daughter of the Bishop of London, and, though Charles I intervened on the side of the couple, Sir Thomas was still opposed to his son when Edward died in 1643 at the siege of Oxford. December of that year brought Aston Hall's most exciting episode when Birmingham Cromwellians attacked it for three days before Sir Thomas and his Royalist garrison gave in. He was heavily filled and imprisoned by the Commonwealth party, twelve of the defenders were killed in the fight, and damage from cannon balls to the balustrade of the great staircase is today a visual reminder of the engagement.
Sir Thomas had fifteen children by his first wife, Grace Bradbourne - Grace abounding - and none by his second, Anne Littleton of Pillaton, near Penkridge. The story is only legendary that Anne disliked one of her step-daughters and persuaded Sir Thomas to lock her up until she went mad. Mr. Ronald Healey, supervisor of Aston Hall, told Vivian Bird: "This daughter is supposed to be our ghost, the White Lady. I have been here thirty years, but I have never seen her. My outstanding memory is of the grace and beauty added to the Long Gallery by Princess Alexandra when she had tea there in 1958."
Princess Alexandra is not the only royalty to have visited Aston Hall. Charles I slept there two nights in 1642 just before the Battle of Edgehill, and today King Charles's Room with his bed is directly off the Great Drawing Room. Queen Victoria declared the hall and grounds open to the public by the Aston Hall and Park Company in 1858, and she was not amused when, in 1863, a 'female Blondin' fell to her death there from a tightrope during a money-raising fete. The Queen's disapproval, and her shock that the place she had inaugurated was not yet paid for, jerked Birmingham Corporation into paying off the remaining £19,000 in 1864.
A frieze of animals in the entrance hall at Aston includes a prominent elephant, the crest of the family of James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, whose son, the younger James, leased Aston Hall in 1818. For all its visual charm and faithful reproduction of periods in its history, Aston Hall comes most alive through the people who have lived there - plus one who merely hangs on the wall of the Great Drawing Room, the intriguing Elizabeth, Lady Monson, daughter of Sir George Reresby. A verse in gold incorporated in the frame of her portrait begins:
“Did not a certain lady whip,
Of late her husband's own lordship?”
Seemingly she "Ty'd him naked to a bedpost", and "clawed him with fundamental blows" - an exhibition having much in common with modern films, but arising, I understand, from a conflict of political loyalties.
One way and another, poor William, Viscount Monson, had a rough passage - and maybe he deserved it, being partly instrumental in the execution of Charles I. He was stripped of his honours at the Restoration, and drawn on a sledge by ropes round his neck from the Tower to Tyburn and back, before being imprisoned in the Tower for life.
Sir Thomas Holte died in 1654. Because his estranged eldest son, Edward, and all his other sons had pre-deceased him, he was succeeded by his grandson, Robert, who became an M.P. - and a prisoner in the Fleet debtor's prison. Nevertheless, the first of his two marriages, to Jane Brereton of Brereton Hall, Cheshire, brought this property to the Holtes in 1722. Meantime, the third baronet, Sir Charles, had restored the family fortunes, while his daughter, Mary, was stitching the famous hangings and the carpet bearing the Holte arms.
The fourth baronet, Sir Cloberry Holte, married a Barbara Lister, of whom he later wrote: "She is seldom at home, or satisfied when she is there." So he left her only £10. She married again, and Sir Cloberry's mother thought her a bad influence, allowing her to spend only two weeks each year with her sons at Aston. Despite three marriages, the elder of these sons, Sir Lister Holte, remained childless, and the succession passed to his brother Charles, the sixth and last baronet, who never lived at Aston Hall, as his wife and Lister's widow, Sarah, were always at loggerheads.
Sir Charles had only one daughter, Mary Elizabeth, and no sons, so the direct Holte line died. Mary married Abraham Bracebridge of Atherstone, and on a bedside table in the Victoria Room at Aston Hall - with its tantalising glimpse of a corner of the playing pitch at Villa Park - is a copy of Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall. The American writer often stayed in Birmingham with his relatives, the Van Warts, and Bracebridge Hall is partly inspired by Aston Hall. The break-up of the Holte estates is a complicated business, arising from Abraham Bracebridge's failure in the soap trade, and a partition of the estates in several counties to satisfy his creditors and Sir Lister's legatees, including the Legge family - the Earls of Dartmouth-and the Digbys of Meriden.
In 1818 a Warwick banking firm, Messrs. Greenway, Greaves, and Whitehead, bought Aston Hall and leased it to James Watt, who lived there until he died in 1848. In that year most of the 300 acres of surrounding parkland was sold for building; and the remainder of a herd of deer dispersed. Afterwards Birmingham Corporation began to take an interest in the hall and what was left of the park. So the Holte line has ended, and today their mansion re-echoes to the hurrying feet of schoolchildren pursuing
social studies. But I believe the Holte crest has lived on and become widely known in the Midlands, though none suspect its origin. This is the squirrel trademark of Ansell's Brewery - a more recent Aston landmark than the hall - acquired in 1934 by Ansell's along with Holt's Brewery of Aston, who used it on their seal as long ago as 1896, though they were not related to the Holtes.
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