Aston Hall: A Jacobean Prodigy House

In this installment of ‘Larger Than Life: Architecture Through the Ages,’ we visit a uniquely English country house.

Aston Hall’s red-brick exterior was typical of English domestic architecture during the Tudor and Jacobean era. The pleasing variety of heights and alterations draws attention to the mansion’s architectural beauty. For the past 400 years, the Jacobean house has been one of Birmingham, England’s most iconic buildings. Oscar Gonzalez Fuentes/Shutterstock

Situated in a park in Birmingham, England, Aston Hall’s magnificent 17th-century mansion was designed by English architect John Thorpe and built for Sir Thomas Holte between 1618 and 1635. The grand estate ranks among the last and the greatest Jacobean prodigy houses, an English country house built by courtiers for the monarch’s royal progress (tour of the kingdom).

Stretching over the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean periods, prodigy houses represent a unique English take on Renaissance architecture. Architectural historian John Summerson considered them “the most daring of all English buildings.” Stylistically, they introduced eclectic mixtures of classical, medieval, and local traditional English elements.