Aston Hall and Park, Birmingham

Queen Victoria opened Aston Hall and Park to the public in June 1858, declaring it a "boon and a comfort to the people of Birmingham".

It took six more years for the Corporation of Birmingham to raise all of the purchase price. Even so, it became the first municipally owned country house in England.

More than 150 years later and Birmingham City Council has again raised funds for the hall. So what are the results of this £12.8m makeover, which was 13 years in the planning and necessitated the closure of the hall for three years?

Arriving at Aston Hall makes you stop and stare. The building is sinister and imposing, the perfect location for a ghostly period drama. Once inside that impression fades away and as you enter the Great Hall it feels surprisingly homely, light and regal.

The hall was a focal point for the recent conservation work and boasts many original features, including the Jacobean moulded ceiling and panelled paintings. The large painting of Sir Thomas Holte is well placed, serving as an introduction to the man who built the house and to his descendants who resided there for nearly 200 years.

Civil war history

The history of Aston Hall and the Holte family is eventful and rich and the experience captures much of this. The hall survived the English civil war and visitors can still see cannonball damage caused by the bombardment of parliamentary troops to the original oak staircase.

They can also visit the Best Lodging Chamber where Charles I apparently stayed. Details of his visit and the English civil war are presented in this room. James Watt Junior owned the hall from 1819 to 1848 as it was close to the Soho foundry, the home of his father's steam engine factory.

Visitors can search for the small windowpane where he engraved his name. His life is not explored beyond the alterations he made to the hall and park, which included leasing much of Holte's deer park, which became the home of the Aston VillaFootball Ground in 1896.

Aston Hall is vast, with about 30 viewable rooms and the level of interpretation appears to have been carefully planned. There is a balance of interpretation-rich rooms, which enable visitors to stock up on background knowledge, and rooms that draw attention to the architectural features, furnishings and decorations and have very little interpretation.

A highlight is the Long Gallery. At 36 feet in length, it was designed for exercising in wet weather and entertaining. It remains one of the least altered rooms in the hall.

The hall has an abundance of quirky stories associated with it, for which there is rarely enough space on the graphic panels. Visitors should not miss out on listening to the knowledgeable and enthusiastic tour guides, who bring these stories to life. A thoughtfully produced audioguide would be a good second best and hopefully there are plans to create one.

This atmosphere evoked by the hall and the trials and tribulations of the Holte family provide a tangible and interesting way to explore life over two centuries. It is a valuable educational resource and every local school pupil should visit at least once.

Community consultation

This development goes far beyond the conservation, renovation and interpretation of the hall. A significant proportion of the funding has been used to transform the derelict stable block, once an important service building to the main hall, into a new shop, cafe and local history gallery.

A 17th-century garden has been created in retrospect for Lady Holte. The original North Range and Icehouse (used for washing, brewing and food storage) have been excavated and the remains revealed.

Archival documents have been used to inform the design and interpretation. Frequent references to this material bring this resource to light in a way that is really helpful to visitors.

The local history of Aston is explored through the new gallery in the old stable block called Astonish! The gallery was developed in response to early consultation that revealed the community's wish for local history displays. It presents the history of Aston through the themes of Work, Play, Home, People, Aston and the World, and the Aston Area.

The gallery is simple and quite small. Imagine a loft conversion in a barn with a smattering of objects in glass cases, low-tech interactives and community-created displays. The choice of local history objects seems a bit random, maybe because the themes are broad and the period of history long.

It's hard to see the connections between a deer and a guitar belonging to rockers Black Sabbath. The photographs and archival material had the most relevance and greatest impact.

The gallery succeeds in giving an overview of Aston's journey from being a countryside haven for the wealthy escaping the city, to an area with significant economic and social problems.

It doesn't shy away from its recent difficulties and puts them in context. It will be interesting to see if the visitor makeup of Aston Hall and Astonish! grows to represent the population on its doorstep, which is two-thirds black and minority ethnic.

Aston Hall, like Aston Villa Football Club, is in the premier league. Both should ensure that the area is a destination for local and regional visitors.

Vicky Brightman is the head of learning at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London