Erdington Hall

History

For three centuries the lords of Erdington lived inside water. Their manor house stood on what the antiquary William Dugdale, writing in 1656, called “a strong moated place”, ringed by a double moat.

The de Erdingtons

The de Erdington family held the manor from about 1166 to 1467. The records of Aston parish show their standing.

Early in the thirteenth century Thomas de Erdington had a private chapel in his manor house. That led to a dispute with the Rector of Aston, and the Victoria County History records the settlement. The chaplain was to hand over offerings to the mother church. Thomas and his wife were to attend Aston church on feast days. And every year, on the feast of St Peter and St Paul, they were to offer two wax candles weighing three pounds.

The family kept their chapel. In 1309 Henry de Erdington guaranteed 60 shillings a year for a priest to serve it. In 1449 Sir Thomas Erdington was licensed to found a chantry in the south aisle of Aston church, and the family’s effigies still lie there.

A new hall

The medieval house did not survive into modern times. The Victoria County History says a new hall was “built on or near the site of the old manor-house probably in the 1650s or 1660s by John Jennens or by his son, Humphrey”. It describes “a brick building with stone dressings and Dutch gables, having three stories and attics”.

After the Jennens family came Sir Lister Holte of Aston Hall, and later a series of tenants. In 1880–81 the local antiquary Everitt noted a bridge over the former moat.

The road

Erdington Hall was still lived in in 1908. Four years later it was gone. The Victoria County History says it was “demolished in 1912”. The Birmingham Historic Environment Record says it was “demolished in 1912 during the construction of a road”: Tyburn Road, which now runs past the site near Abbotts Road and Erdington Hall Road. One account says a fragment lingered until about the First World War.

What is left

Today there are “no visible remains”, in the words of the Historic Environment Record. There is no moat to see, and no stones.

What survives is the name. Erdington Hall Road runs nearby, and Erdington Hall Bridge carries a crossing over the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal. To find the de Erdingtons themselves, go to Aston parish church. In its Erdington chapel lie the effigies of Thomas de Erdington, who died in the 1430s, and his wife. They have outlasted the house by more than a century.

That is the strange inheritance of Erdington Hall. A family that once argued with the Rector of Aston over two candles is now better remembered in his church than in the place they ruled.

Why it disappeared

Road building

The hall was “demolished in 1912” (Victoria County History), “during the construction of a road” (Birmingham Historic Environment Record, via the Gatehouse Gazetteer): Tyburn Road.