Using a design by
John Thorpe, construction was commenced in April 1618 by
Sir Thomas Holte, who finally moved into the hall in 1631. The house was completed in April 1635, and is now Grade I
listed. It sits in a large park, part of which became
Villa Park, the home ground of the
Aston Villa football club. The park is listed Grade II in
Historic England's
Register of Parks and Gardens. The house was severely damaged after an attack by
Parliamentary troops in 1643. Some of the damage is still evident, and there is a hole in the staircase where a cannonball went through a window and an open door, and into the banister. The house remained in the Holte family until 1817, when it was sold and leased by
James Watt Jr., son of industrial pioneer
James Watt. The house was purchased in 1858 by a private company (the Aston Hall and Park Company Ltd) for use as a public park and museum. After the company ran into financial difficulties, the house was bought by the
Birmingham Corporation in 1864, becoming the first historic country house to pass into municipal ownership. Aston Hall was visited by
Washington Irving, who wrote about it as
Bracebridge Hall, taking the name from Abraham Bracebridge, husband of the last member of the Holte family to live there. Irving's
The Sketch Book stories described the harmonious warm-hearted English Christmas festivities he experienced while staying in Aston Hall, that had largely been abandoned. An Aston Hall custom the owners afforded the servants of the house on Christmas Eve appeared in ''
The Gentleman's Magazine'' in 1795, which said: "the servants have full liberty to drink, dance, sing, and go to bed when they please." 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, which shared a building in Paradise Street, until the building of the current Art Gallery in the
Council House complex. 's statue of
Pan, in 1989 In the 1920s, the
Birmingham Corporation was having financial troubles and had to choose between saving Aston Hall and the nearby
Perry Hall. Aston Hall was saved, and in 1927, the
Birmingham Civic Society designed formal gardens which were constructed by the city with a workforce recruited from the unemployed and paid for by government grants. The scheme included fountains, terracing and stone urns and a statue of
Pan, by
William Bloye, which the Civic Society paid for itself. In 1934 the finished work was presented to the City Parks Committee and unveiled by the Vice President of The Birmingham Civic Society,
Gilbert Barling. As of January 2011, Birmingham City Council was working on the restoration of the statue, the head of which was missing. The council appealed for old photographs to assist in its reconstruction. In 1938, the Pageant of Birmingham, with around 10,000 performers, was held in the grounds, to commemorate the centenary of Birmingham becoming a borough. ==Current status==