Aston Parish Church (St Peter and St Paul)

History

Before Birmingham swallowed it, Aston was a huge parish, and this was its mother church.

A parish six miles wide

Domesday Book mentions a priest at Aston, so a church can be assumed here by 1086 or earlier. The Victoria County History describes a parish that covered a wide, scattered area. The church stood on its western edge, and some of its hamlets lay up to six miles away.

Daughter chapels grew up to serve them. In the twelfth century there were chapels dependent on Aston at Yardley, Castle Bromwich and Water Orton. Deritend’s chapel of St John the Baptist was founded in 1381, because Deritend and Bordesley were far from the parish church and the river flooded in winter. Even then, the people of Deritend still had to come to Aston on the great feasts, including the feast of St Peter and St Paul, the dedication of this church.

Lords and their tombs

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

The lords of the surrounding manors were buried and remembered here. In 1449 Sir Thomas Erdington, lord of Erdington, was licensed to found a chantry at the altar of St Mary in the south aisle. His family’s monuments are still in what is called the Erdington chapel. Historic England’s list entry describes the effigies of an earlier Sir Thomas Erdington, who died in the 1430s, and his wife, he in armour and she in a long skirt and mantle, on a tomb chest carved with shields and angels.

The Holtes of Aston Hall, the great house next door, are remembered mostly in the north aisle. There are effigies of William Holte (died 1514) and his wife Joan, a wall monument showing Edward Holte (died 1592) and his wife Dorothy kneeling, and an early eighteenth-century monument with weeping cherubs to Sir Thomas Holte (died 1654), who built Aston Hall. There is a knight of about 1360 and a lady of about 1490 lying together on one tomb, and effigies of Sir Edward Devereux (died 1622) and his wife Katherine.

Rebuilt by the Victorians

Only the tower is medieval. It dates from the fifteenth century, with four stages and unusual tall narrow openings at the bell stage. The spire above it was renewed in 1776–77 by John Cheshire.

Everything else was rebuilt between 1879 and 1890 to designs by Julius Alfred Chatwin, with a south porch added in 1908. Historic England’s list entry describes a long, high interior with no chancel arch, a hammer-beam roof full of carved angels, a five-sided apse lit by Hardman windows of 1885 showing the Adoration of the Lamb, and a marble sanctuary. Chatwin designed the font and pulpit too.

Look above the north door for a window of the eighteenth century by Francis Eginton, the engraver and artist who worked for Matthew Boulton at Soho. A bust of 1883 remembers John Rogers, born in Deritend and burned at the stake in 1555.

A parish broken up

As Birmingham grew, the old parish was carved up. The Victoria County History counts 31 more churches built and consecrated within the ancient parish of Aston, inside the modern city boundary, between 1823 and 1952. Parishes were cut out of Aston for Duddeston, Bordesley, Saltley, Lozells, Erdington, Sparkbrook, Deritend and more.

At risk

The church is listed at Grade II*. It is also on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register, as a place of worship at risk, in both 2024 and 2025.

This is not a lost building. It is a survivor that needs care. For more than nine hundred years Aston has had a church, and within these walls lie lords of Erdington and Aston whose own houses have long since gone.