About Cheltonia

Cheltenham is a Regency-period spa town in Gloucestershire, south-west England. And this is a warts-and-all celebration of the town and its unique heritage. Cheltonia is an ongoing street-by-street history and biography. It’s illustrated with photographs I’ve taken over the last decade or so and some old maps I’ve lovingly hand-coloured. This site is not about the corporate Cheltenham, nor the touristy Cheltenham, but small focused vignettes of the town as it really is (or was in the past).

I worry that Cheltenham is suffering a slow and irreversable loss of character. Insensitive planning and get-rich-quick property speculation have taken their toll in the last few boom years. Even now the secluded lanes of Lansdown are alive with the clanking of lorries and the whine of angle-grinders as people defy the credit crunch for one more makeover spree. My pictures cover the last decade and a half but I wish I’d started my photographic efforts earlier, as so many beautiful things in the town have disappeared in the last 15 years.

I’m not making Cheltenham out to be some heritage utopia which has to be preserved at all costs and in every detail. I’d just like to see the developers and councillors show a little respect for the town instead of shitting their max-profit cram-’em-in development portfolios all over it, and destroying beautiful buildings for profit. Of course Cheltenham was built by extravagant property speculators taking stupid risks, and its finest landmarks are the legacy of people whose building schemes were so overblown they bankrupted themselves. But the things they left behind them are treasures, buildings of inspiring beauty and breathtaking craftsmanship. How proud will the next generation of Cheltonians feel about the monstrous multi-storey slab of “luxury” hamster-cage apartments splattered over a blighted area which until recently was the location of one of Cheltenham’s last working spas? It’s a mean-spirited legacy.

I found in the far corner of Rodney Road car park a single remaining fragment of an old garden wall from a house long since demolished, probably Wellington Cottage which appears on old maps. It wasn’t really a wall, just a ghost of one with a brick arch studded with moss standing precariously poised and balanced by its own weight over the River Chelt. Well worth a photograph. When I went back with my camera a few months later it was gone.

I keep taking the photographs because I never know what’s going to disappear next.

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Cheltonia is not really a blog: it’s a collection of articles, slowly becoming a street-by-street and feature-by-feature biography of the town, indexed by area. It is built around a blog template because WordPress provides a very convenient platform for adding and organising content. My work on the site is often (by necessity) seasonal … so don’t worry if it looks like nothing has been posted for ages. I haven’t given up, I’m just more likely to post stuff in bursts of activity rather than with blogesque regularity.

Much of the information in the articles is founded on the research of others. This site would absolutely not be possible without the online historical gazetteer of Cheltenham freely provided by James Hodsdon and Ray Wilson of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society – it is a priceless resource. Also very helpful is the beautifully researched Gloucestershire Pubs History site by Geoff Sandles, now incorporated into the Gloucestershire CAMRA site.

I’ve also drawn on a number of useful books including:

The Book of Cheltenham by Steven Blake and Roger Beacham

A History of Cheltenham by Gwen Hart

Cheltenham’s Lost Heritage by Oliver Bradbury (thanks Simon for recommending it)

A Cheltenham Companion by Aylwin Sampson and Steven Blake

Cheltenham’s Ornamental Ironwork by Amina Chatwin

Cheltenham Betrayed by Timothy Mowl

The Story of Cheltenham by Robin Brooks

Cheltenham, A History by Sue Rowbotham and Jill Waller

The Story of Tivoli by Brian Torode

St George’s Place by the Cheltenham Spa Campaign

The main maps you’ll see on Cheltonia are Mitchell’s 1806 map, Cossens’ Post Office map of 1820 (pictured below), Merrett’s 1834 map and a 1927 map from Kelly’s Directory. Supplemented by others such as Bacon’s 1880 map and a large-scale 1921 OS map. All hand coloured in acrylic paints (on a photocopy not an original!) If you are in Cheltenham, there is a brilliant portfolio of historic maps in the reference section (upstairs) in Cheltenham Library. Alternatively a large-scale two-part 1920s map of the town is available from Alan Godfrey Maps.

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So who is the person behind Cheltonia? Well, it doesn’t matter much, but if you’re curious I am a Cheltenham born (and resident) musician. Click the graphic below to find out more about what I do when I’m not photographing street furniture.

Both my albums are also available from Rise, 19 Beechwood Arcade, Cheltenham. I am trying to encourage people to buy from local independent shops, especially those (like Rise) who have a policy of supporting local artists!

If you want to contact me directly, you can reach me at “spa.didah” at “googlemail.com”. Where possible I love to help people with historical or family tree research, but my usefulness sometimes depends on how busy I am at the time you ask me.

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All text and photographs on this site are copyright. Please ask permission before using them elsewhere. Thanks.