Talk:Church of SS Peter & Paul, Aston

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The following text has been moved here for discussion from the article Church of St Barnabas, Erdington. DWaterson 13:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Erdington Parish Church was originally the Parish Church of Aston.

[edit] Aston parish church

Before the 19th Century Aston was larger than Erdington. The tower of Aston Parish Church was built in 1480 but most of the church is Victorian built in 1879, and indicates that the area was wealthy at that time.

It is believed that there was a wooden church in Aston in Saxon times and a preaching cross in the Norman dynasty. A church with a full time priest was mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086. Ralph Arden, ancestor of William Shakespeare is buried there. The church was marked by the Wars of the Roses, when Sir Thomas de Erdington added decorations. A bust of John Rogers dates from the Protestant Reformation. There is a 15th Century monument of the Erdington family. Parish records of baptisms, burials and marriages began in the 16th Century. Church Records are kept in Birmingham Reference Library located in Birmingham Central Library. Six soldiers killed during siege of Aston Hall in the English Civil War are buried in unmarked graves. There are memorials of the Holt family, who owned Aston Hall. A War memorial was added in the First World War and broken windows were replaced in the Second World War.

It seems to me that the inclusion of this text in Church of St Barnabas, Erdington was quite wrong. There is no evidence to suggest that "Erdington Parish Church was originally the Parish Church of Aston", given that St Barnabas was built in 1822-3 according to Images of England and consequently far post-dates the mediaeval foundation of SS Peter & Paul, Aston. I would guess the closest to accurate is that Erdington was once within the parish of Aston, before becoming its own parish much later, but this doesn't really explain the confusion of the two churches in the articles. DWaterson 13:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)