On a wet and blustery afternoon, Villa won the game 3-0 in front of over 15,000 spectators, with Johnny Campbell making history by scoring the first goal on the new ground. Villa Park at this time, though, still belonged to Flowers & Co, a brewery from Stratford-upon-Avon.

It was Frederick Rinder and Charles Johnstone who did the early work in negotiating a lease from the owners and it ran for a 21 year period at a starting rent of £250 per annum. Rinder, quite wisely, negotiated an added option to purchase the land at five shillings a square yard within 21 years and by 1911 Villa were well on the way to owning a stadium which would compare with the best in the world. For a number of years, however, the new ground remained incomplete as there was very little covered accommodation.

It had a stand which seated 5,500 fans, with another 4,500 standing in front, and on the Trinity Road side of the stadium approximately 8,000 could find accommodation. But the rest of the Villa fans had to be content with open-terracing - and on matchdays were often drenched. Gradually though, with Frederick Rinder's guidance, the ground was completely overhauled and original features from the ground's amusement park days, such as the aquarium, the restaurant, the roller skating rink and the cycling track, were either dismantled or adapted for another purpose.

A solid roof was erected over the Witton Lane side of the ground and Villa installed new offices and a gymnasium within the building.

An impressive practice pitch was laid at the rear of the ground and Villa also made room for a sizeable car park on the site of an old theatre. Much of the credit for the actual design of Villa Park must to go Rinder, who had visualised its eventual appearance from a number of sketches he had made himself and passed on to a well-established architect of the day, E B Holmes.

Rinder's structural ideas originally called for a ground that would hold 130,000 people and, but for the outbreak of World War One, the Villa chairman's ambition would no doubt have been realised, with the creation of the finest stadium in Great Britain. With his plans put on hold during the war, work on Rinder's vision continued in 1918, although his ambitious pre-war schemes were only ever partially developed. The Witton Lane stand was extended and the banking behind both goals was built up, but it was not until 1922 that he modern Trinity Road stand was built to replace the old covered enclosure.

Opened by King George VI in 1924 and open to the public a year earlier, this stand still remains a prominent feature of Villa Park today. Other than the improvement of crash barriers and perimeter walls, and the installation of new turnstiles, the only other major redevelopment up to 1940 was done on the Holte End terracing which, despite severe restrictions on building, was made even higher during the early years of the war. Villa Park was finally complete but it had been built to house only 80,000 people, two-thirds the number Frederick Rinder had originally intended.

After the Second World War was declared, Villa Park was closed for football and given over to the military, with the Trinity Road stand converted into an air-raid shelter and stores and the dressing rooms being used by a rifle company of the 9th Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

The ground came under fire from German bombers in the early war years and during one raid, part of the roof of the Witton Lane stand was actually blown off.

Soon after the war ended, the fans flocked back to the ground and in March 1946 the biggest attendance ever recorded at Villa Park - 76,588 - packed inside to see Villa lose narrowly to Derby County in the sixth round of the FA Cup. For the next 30 years readjustments to the ground were only relatively minor, although floodlights were installed at the ground in 1958, the Holte End was covered in 1962 and the Witton Lane stand had its old 'rounded-roof' removed and replaced with a more conventional sloping one in 1964.

In 1966, Villa Park was nominated as one of the venues for the World Cup and in all the ground staged three matches in the competition; Spain v Argentina, West Germany v Spain and Argentina v West Germany. Villa, though, had to spend £99,450 on ground improvements in order to host these games as the players' tunnel had to be covered with a cage and more than 6,000 temporary seats were installed in the Witton Lane end.

In the late 1970s, as Villa began to re-establish themselves back among the top clubs after a lengthy spell in the lower divisions, plans were laid for the next major development of the ground, with the building of the North Stand at the Witton Lane end. The new stand was to be an impressive feature and after completion Villa Park was completely under cover for the first time ever. However, although the North Stand was much admired, the manner in which it was paid for caused an enormous amount of publicity and left the club deep in debt for a number of years. Never before had the construction of a sporting arena caused such a scandal as a police investigation and an internal inquiry found that around three-quarters of a million pounds of work had been unaccounted for. The heads of two directors rolled but this could not prevent the club's relationships with their supports being irretrievably damaged.

In 1981 as Villa mounted their challenge for the championship, electronic scoreboards were placed at the ground. Villa also installed a mechanically powered plastic cover to try to protect the pitch which, because of the erection of the North Stand, lacked much needed sunlight and ventilation and suffered badly throughout the 1980s.

After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, the club were forced to make further changes to the stadium to comply with all the requirements of the Taylor's report into ground safety. Seats were immediately put in place at the front of the North Stand, but the first major stage of these alterations was finished during the 1993/94 season. This was the impressive new Witton Lane Stand, which is a double-decker cantilever construction that can house 10,000 spectators and cost around £5 million to build. The second stage started on 7 May 1994, after 45,347 supporters said an emotional farewell to Villa Park's most notorious landmark, the Holte End. First built in the immediate years after the First World War and named after the architect who built Aston Hall, the Holte terrace was marginally the largest 'kop' in English football and was viewed as the spiritual home to the most ardent of Villa fans. With the advent of all-seater stadiums, though, its days were numbered and during the 1994/95 season a new Holte End had been built.

This was the final piece in the Villa Park jigsaw and, built on a similar design to the Witton Lane and North stands, it holds approximately 13,500 spectators, which brings the Villa Park capacity to around 40,000.

As Aston Villa can now boast one of the finest stadiums across Europe, a venue that would be worthy of staging any football match.