"Unicorns and Cannonballs...

Frankly, it's anyone's guess what in tarnation The Waterboys were on about in the lyrics to Whole Of The Moon but, piers aside, they've inadvertently summed up the history of Aston Hall. We went on a tour of everyone's favourite Jacobean des-res and scribbled illegible notes throughout. Here's what we think they said...  

NOT SUCH NEW NEWS
While it may well be that the world really is going to hell in a handbasket, Aston Hall's kind of been there and done that on a number of fronts. Let's start with Sir Thomas Holte, the guy who had the Jacobean mansion built, with work commencing in 1612. Not content with his knighthood, Sir T bought himself the title of Baronet from King James I, who was in desperate need of money to put towards England's Irish troubles. Did somebody say cash for honours?

The prodigy house (nothing to do with Firestarters, it's just a term for houses of this grandeur) was constructed on a hill and at an angle that made it as visible as possible to passing traffic and the local area (basically all of which T-dawg owned by this point), despite being exactly 90 degrees off the angle that would have maximised sunlight hours. He favoured pomp over tanning, presumably.

One of the grandest rooms in the house is humbly titled the Great Hall, where Tommy's many tenants would come to pay their rent: apparently conspicuous consumption as a symbol of status has been going on for a fair while too.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
And while we're on the subject of the not so new, can we talk about unicorns? It turns out Millennials don't get much of a claim over the fabled creatures, which appear in numerous crests and friezes throughout Aston Hall. And this was rather more than an aesthetic decision. When Scotland and England unified under King James VI (of Scotland) in 1603, Scotland's Royal Arms had two unicorns supporting a shield. When Jimbo also became James I of England the king replaced the unicorn on the left of the shield with the national animal of England, the lion, to show the unity of the two countries. Suffice to say there are also a lot of lions in north Brum's manor.

On the less ferocious spectrum, squirrels were the favoured creature for the Holte family, so you'll also see plenty of those, as well as acorns in the intricate woodwork of rooms like the Long Gallery (true to its name, it's 136 feet and pictured bottom).

Elephants make up the fourth animal you'll spy bags of. A later addition to the decor, James Watt Jr — the son of the Lunar Society's main man — who had a long lease over Aston Hall from 1817, added in nellies to put his mark on the property and flag where he'd made expensive changes to his new pad. Show-off.

WATT'S THE BEEF?
While Watt used his property largely for Downton-style parties and corporate entertaining — smoothy — Aston Hall was also visited during this period by American author, Washington Irving, whose best-known book Bracebridge Hall (1822) was loosely based on... you guessed it.

Going back a bit, the Hall also hosted Charles I in October 1642, two months after he'd ballsily declared war on his own parliament. Though this visit might seem like a big honour, it really didn't help the Holte family's fate in the English Civil War all that much, with their 50ish-room home attacked in 1643 by a Parliamentarian force from Cov. A hole made in the staircase by a cannonball (now you're starting to get the convoluted intro) that must have come through the Hall's exterior wall in the siege can be seen in the etching above, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on inspection duties.

TIGHTROPES AND TRAGEDY
Also visiting as a girl when she was titled Princess Alexandrina Victoria, Queen Vic took quite an interest in Aston Hall over the years. In July 1863, in an attempt to raise money, the now cash-strapped Hall held a fair in which tightrope walker, Selina Powell, dramatically fell off her rope between two lodges and is said to have died on the floor of the Great Hall. Finding the incident massively distasteful, Victoria wrote to the mayor of Birmingham, concerned about the future of the estate.

Under pressure from the reigning monarch, Aston Hall was bought by the city the next year and Victoria came to open the first historic country house to pass into municipal ownership and become a museum. Which brings us up to today. Around 25 of Aston Hall's rooms are still open to the public and you can even see the hole that cannonball made. There's still no piers, mind. Take yourself on a wander, or maybe even join a tour.

Images: Birmingham Museums Trust (modern imagery Verity Milligan)