Aston Hall is an 18th-century country house, now converted to residential apartments, at

Aston-on-Trent Aston-on-Trent is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the South Derbyshire district, in the county of Derbyshire, England. The parish had a population of 1,682 at the 2011 Census. It is adjacent to Weston-on-Trent and near ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

. It is a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The Aston Hall Hospital site displays

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports the proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the proposition is truth, true. The exact definition and role of evidence vary across different fields. In epistemology, evidence is what J ...

of a multi-phase

prehistoric Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

which spans the

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Ancient Greek language, Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic i ...

through to the Late

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

;

Sherds This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

of undecorated,

carinate Carinate is a shape in pottery, glassware and artistic design usually applied to amphorae or vases. The shape is defined by the joining of a rounded base to the sides of an inward sloping vessel. This design is seen in ancient cultures such as ...

d bowl tradition

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

dating to the Early

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

Grooved Ware Grooved ware is the name given to a pottery style of the British Neolithic. Its manufacturers are sometimes known as the Grooved ware people. Unlike the later Beaker ware, Grooved culture was not an import from the continent but seems to have d ...

of Clacton style (in use between 2900 cal BC and 2100 cal BC) and

Flints Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start fire ...

dating to the Early Neolithic. Pits contained

hazelnut The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus '' Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according to ...

mollusc shell The mollusc (or mollusk) shell is typically a calcareous exoskeleton which encloses, supports and protects the soft parts of an animal in the phylum Mollusca, which includes snails, clams, tusk shells, and several other classes. Not all shelled ...

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

spelt Spelt (''Triticum spelta''), also known as dinkel wheat is a species of wheat. It is a relict crop, eaten in Central Europe and northern Spain. It is high in protein and may be considered a health food. Spelt was cultivated from the Neolit ...

and

rye Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is grown principally in an area from Eastern and Northern Europe into Russia. It is much more tolerant of cold weather and poor soil than o ...

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...

s. An

East Midlands The East Midlands is one of nine official regions of England. It comprises the eastern half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It consists of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire (except for North Lincolnshire and North East ...

variant of the Deverel-Rimbury ceramic tradition, currently dated to the Middle

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

were found to have similar fabrics containing rounded

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is usually defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural ...

and

clastic sedimentary rock Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks b ...

fragments as temper. Dating evidence from the

earby Earby is a town and civil parish within the Borough of Pendle, Lancashire, England. Although within the boundaries of the Historic counties of England, historic West Riding of Yorkshire, West Riding of Yorkshire, Earby has been administered by ...

Aston

Cursus Cursuses are monumental Neolithic enclosure structures comprising parallel banks with external ditches or trenches. Found only in the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, relics within them indicate that they were built between 3400 and 3000 BC ...

, Willington Cursus, and associated earlier and later

funerary A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...

barrows have normally been attributed to the Middle and Later Neolithic, however, the Early Neolithic pits across the site, although infrequent, demonstrate

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

activity in this landscape as early as the

4th millennium BC File:4th millennium BC montage.jpg, 400x400px, From top left clockwise: The Temple of Ġgantija, one of the oldest freestanding structures in the world; Warka Vase; Bronocice pot with one of the earliest known depictions of a wheeled vehicle; Kish ...

. At the time of the

Norman conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, French people, French, Flemish people, Flemish, and Bretons, Breton troops, all led by the Du ...

, Aston-on-Trent was part of the Manor of Weston which was granted by the Crown to the

Earl of Chester The Earldom of Chester () was one of the most powerful earldoms in medieval England, extending principally over the counties of Cheshire and Flintshire. Since 1301 the title has generally been granted to heirs apparent to the English throne, ...

and by him to the

Abbey of St Werburgh Chester Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral and the mother church of the Diocese of Chester. It is located in the city of Chester, Cheshire, England. The cathedral, formerly the abbey church of a Benedictine monastery dedicated to Saint ...

Chester Chester is a cathedral city in Cheshire, England, on the River Dee, Wales, River Dee, close to the England–Wales border. With a built-up area population of 92,760 in 2021, it is the most populous settlement in the borough of Cheshire West an ...

. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Manor was granted to Sir William Paget. In 1612 Weston passed to Anthony Roper by marriage and in 1633 he purchased the house and estate at Aston. In 1648 he sold the estate to Robert Holden of Shardlow. His descendant, also Robert Holden, was a successful lawyer who replaced the old house with a new red brick three storey five bayed mansion in 1735. The house was greatly extended by the addition of a substantial north wing and other improvements by Edward Anthony Holden who was

High Sheriff of Derbyshire This is a list of Sheriffs of Derbyshire from 1567 until 1974 and High Sheriffs since. The ancient Sheriff title originating in the time of the Angles, not long after the invasion of the Kingdom of England, which was in existence for around ...

in 1838. Holden's daughter

Mary Shuttleworth Boden Mary Shuttleworth Boden (25 March 1840 – 21 July 1922) was an activist in the British temperance movement. She was affiliated with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W. C. T. U.), British Women's Temperance Association (B. W. T. A.), Britis ...

was born here in 1840. She was a noted temperance campaigner and she gave Derby its first children's playground. The estate was sold by the Holdens in 1898 to William Dicken Winterbottom, who enlarged the Hall in 1907 and engaged

Thomas Hayton Mawson Thomas Hayton Mawson (5 May 1861 – 14 November 1933), known as T. H. Mawson, was a British garden designer, landscape architect, and town planner. Personal life Mawson was born in Nether Wyresdale, Lancashire, and left school at age 12. ...

to redesign the garden. After Winterbottom's death in 1924 it was broken up and the house was sold to Nottingham County Council and became Nottingham Corporation Home for Mental Deficients in about 1930. After joining the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

in 1948, it became known as Aston Hall Hospital. It was operated by South Derbyshire District Health Authority from 1974. The hospital closed in about 1993 and more recently the hall has been restored, renovated and converted into residential apartments. A report published in July 2018 referred to allegations of abuse at the hospital in the 1960s and 1970s. The Secretary of State for Health,

Matt Hancock Matthew John David Hancock (born 2 October 1978) is a British politician who served as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General from 2015 to 2016, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from January to July 20 ...

, gave an apology on behalf of the government in December 2020.

References

Sources

* {{cite book, last=Cherrington, first=Ernest Hurst, title=Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WHnaAAAAMAAJ, volume=1, year=1924, publisher=American Issue Publishing Company Grade II* listed buildings in Derbyshire Country houses in Derbyshire Hospitals in Derbyshire Defunct hospitals in England

History

See also

References

Sources