Cheltenham
Situated in the heart of Cotswold country, Cheltenham is one of the most famous spa towns in England. It is a beautifully planned town graced by architecture from the Regency period of the early 19th century and with wide tree-lined avenues. In addition to its spa, Cheltenham has always offered a wide range of entertainment. For instance, it plays host to internationally renowned music and literary festivals as well as many sporting events, notably cricket and horse racing.
Before the 18 th century Cheltenham was an insignificant small market town tucked underneath the Cotswold edge. However, in 1715 William Mason, a local Quaker farmer, descovered a saline spring in one of his fields. This fortunate discovery began a sequence of events which was to alter the character of the town out of all recognition. In 1738 his son-in-law Captain Henry Skillicorne, a retired merchant seaman, inherited the land and subsequently deepened and enclosed the spring and built a spa which included a ballroom and a network of walks and rides which now form the tree-lined Promenade.
Following a report in 1740 which stated that the mineral waters at Cheltenham were of the highest quality the town's reputations grew. Many celebrities of the day visited the spa. In 1788 King George III with his family, spent 5 weeks ‘taking the waters' which transformed Cheltenham into a highly fashionable resort. A period of spectacular development followed. An entirely new town was planned to incorporate the best features of neoclassical Regency architecture resulting in the elegant modern town of today. It was during this period in 1816 that the popular Duke of Wellington took the waters to treat a liver complaint; this further boosted the spa town's spiralling reputation.
In the early 19th century great architecture was added to the town with the completion in the 1820s of two unique structures. The Promenade, renowned for its superb fountain of Neptune, styled on the Trevi Fountain in Rome, is a wide spacious street lined with splendid Regency houses, trees and statues incorporating Ionic columns and a pediment at the entrance. The Pittville Pump Room is an extravagant masterpiece built between 1825-30, standing within spacious parkland to the north of town. It was built by Joseph Pitt MP as a place to entertain his circle of friends, and consists of a great hall surmounted by a gallery and dome, with a colonnade of Ionic Columns based on The Temple of Illisus in Athens. The beautiful grounds contain great lawns and tree-lined lakes. Today, the Pittsville Pump Room Museum houses imaginative displays of original period costumes dating from its Regency renaissance to the present day.
Other than the Pump Room, Cheltenham's best known examples of Regency building are Montpelier Walk and the Rotunda. The Walk is lined with female statues modelled on those of the Erechtheion Temple at Athens supporting the upper stories, and the Rotunda was the pump room of Montpelier Spa. Suffolk Place and Lansdown Place are both fine examples of elegant Georgian streets, well worth the visit. Regency craftsmen excelled in decorative cast-iron work, and one of the common features of the town's architecture is the delicate ironwork built into many upstairs balconies and verandas. Cheltenham's famous spa water can still be sampled at the Town Hall, as well as at the Pittsville Pump Room, and remains the only natural, drinkable alkaline water in Britain. It is certainly an acquired taste.
Between Pittsville and the town centre lies the Gustav Holst Birthplace Museum. Situated in Clarence Road the terraced Regency house was where the acclaimed composer of the ‘Planet's Suite' was born in 1874, being inspired by the surrounding Cotswold countryside. Among the items displayed is Holst's original concert piano.
Cheltenham annually hosts a number of top-class arts festivals such as the prestigious International Festival of Music, which gives first performances of new works by British composers. Benjamin Britten, Malcolm Arnold, Sir Arthur Bliss have all been presented. Competitors from all over Europe attend the Festival of Literature and the town's oldest festival, that of Music, Speech, Drama and Dancing. A popular cricket festival has been held in the town since 1877, and it hosts one of the nation's premier horse racing events.
Cheltenham is the most complete Regency town in Britain and as such has very little that remains from earlier historical periods. The only surviving building from the Middle Ages is the parish Church of St Mary, part of which dates from the 12th century.
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