Bodymoor Heath Training Ground is Aston Villa Football Club

Aston Villa F.C.

Aston Villa Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Witton, Birmingham. The club was founded in 1874 and have played at their current home ground, Villa Park, since 1897. Aston Villa were founder members of The Football League in 1888. They were also founder...

's training ground, at Bodymoor Heath

Bodymoor Heath

Bodymoor Heath is a small village in the North Warwickshire district of the county of Warwickshire in England, situated on, and with a bridge over, the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal close to the much larger village of Kingsbury....

 in the North Warwickshire district

North Warwickshire

North Warwickshire is a local government district and borough in Warwickshire, England. The main town in the district is Atherstone where the council is based...

 of Warwickshire

Warwickshire

Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...

, England.

The site was purchased from a farmer by the then Aston Villa Chairman Doug Ellis

Doug Ellis

Herbert Douglas Ellis, OBE , is an entrepreneur, best known as the former chairman of Aston Villa Football Club.-Early life:...

 in the early 1970s.

The ground is situated near Fazeley

Fazeley

Fazeley is a small town and civil parish in the District of Lichfield, Staffordshire, England. Fazeley is located on the outskirts of Tamworth and the civil parish of Fazeley also includes Mile Oak and Bonehill....

, in the Tame Valley

River Tame, West Midlands

The River Tame is the main river of the West Midlands, and the most important tributary of the River Trent. The Tame is about 40 km from source at Oldbury to its confluence with the Trent near Alrewas, but the main river length of the entire catchment, i.e...

, by the side of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal

Birmingham and Fazeley Canal

The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal is a canal of the Birmingham Canal Navigations in the West Midlands of England. Its purpose was to provide a link between the Coventry Canal and Birmingham and thereby connect Birmingham to London via the Oxford Canal....

, a short distance distance from Drayton Manor Theme Park

Drayton Manor Theme Park

Drayton Manor Theme Park is a theme park, resort & zoo in the grounds of the former Drayton Manor, near Tamworth in Staffordshire, England.Drayton Manor is best known because it is a theme park and zoo which attracts around 1.4 million people a year. The attraction has a wide selection of rides set...

 and Middleton Hall

Middleton Hall

Middleton Hall is a Grade II listed building dating back to medieval times. It is situated in the North Warwickshire district of the county of Warwickshire in England, south of Fazeley and Tamworth and on the opposite side of the A4091 road to Middleton village.The Manor of Middleton was held by...

. It lies close to The Belfry

The Belfry

The Belfry is a golf resort in Wishaw, Warwickshire, England, very near the Sutton Coldfield district of Birmingham, and owned since 2005 by Irish businessman Sean Quinn....

 Golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 Club, Middleton Lakes RSPB reserve

Middleton Lakes RSPB reserve

Middleton Lakes RSPB reserve is a nature reserve, formally opened on 19 May 2011, created and run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds at Middleton, Warwickshire, England, just south of Tamworth...

 and Kingsbury Water Park

Kingsbury Water Park

Kingsbury Water Park is a country park in north Warwickshire, England, not far from Birmingham and lying on the River Tame. It is owned and managed by Warwickshire County Council. It has fifteen lakes situated in over 600 acres of country park. It is renowned for its birdlife, and is popular with...

, just a few hundred metres from the M42

M42 motorway

The M42 motorway is a major road in England. The motorway runs north east from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire to just south west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, passing Redditch, Solihull, the National Exhibition Centre and Tamworth on the way. The section between the M40 and M6 road forms...

 link to Tamworth

Tamworth

Tamworth is a town and local government district in Staffordshire, England, located north-east of Birmingham city centre and north-west of London. The town takes its name from the River Tame, which flows through the town, as does the River Anker...

 and Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

.

Many of the past and present Aston Villa players have taken up residence in the area, one of the more rural parts of the Midlands, enabling them speedy travel to training sessions.

Redevelopment

Although Bodymoor Heath was state-of-the-art in the 1970s, well advanced from the previous training facility in Trinity Road, Aston, by the late 1990s the facilities had started to look dated. This prompted then-Villa manager John Gregory to criticise Ellis, stating that he believed he was "stuck in a time warp", citing the Chairman's reluctance to invest.

Planning permission has also been a significant problem in the club's intent to modernise both the training facilities and the ground itself, and it wasn't until November 2005 that Ellis and Aston Villa plc announced an £8 million redevelopment of Bodymoor in two phases which, it was said, would bring the now antiquated facilities up to the standard of the best in the world. Before the team's largely disappointing 2005-06 Premier League performance, Ellis had revealed that the club had budgeted for 10th-12th place. However, they finishing 16th, and as a result the development came to halt, having already been scaled down from its original plans.

Once Randy Lerner

Randy Lerner

Randolph D. Lerner is an American entrepreneur and sports team owner.Lerner has been the owner of the American football team, the Cleveland Browns, of the National Football League since October 2002, and the Chairman of Aston Villa Football Club of the English Premier League since 2006...

purchased the club in September 2006, the club announced that work on the redevelopment of Bodymoor Heath would continue but with revisions and upgrades of the original plans resulting in a doubling of the initial proposed costs . The new training ground, designed by HB Architects, was officially unveiled on 6 May 2007, with the Aston Villa squad moving in for the 2007-08 Season.