Cheltenham Spa

by Lauren Gilbert

The location is excellent.   On the edge of the Cotswolds, in a valley with good arable land and water, it is surrounded by defensible hills.  Originally an agricultural settlement, the area has been occupied for hundreds of years, with the original settlement taken over by Romans, subsequently Saxon, Norman, etc.  Mentioned in the Domesday Book, the town was awarded a market charter in 1226 and was a royal gift for centuries. The excellence of the site was enhanced by the number of roads that went through the area. However, the town remained a fairly small town occupied by and visited by farmers and local gentry for markets and fairs.

Salt springs were discovered 1716. People drank the waters for health, found them good, and more came. After a while, the waters were sold. The original site was enclosed in 1721. Then Captain Henry Skillicone, owner of the spring, turned the spring into a well with an avenue of trees leading to the well, a pump room, and assembly rooms between  1738-1742. This is the beginning of the development of Cheltenham as a health center and the growth of the town to a thriving medical and social center.

In 1740 a book was written about the healthful qualities of the waters by a Doctor Short. More new spas were built in the area. Gradually the spas were visited by more upper crust and celebrities. Handel and Samuel Johnson visited. However, a visit by George III and the royal family for a month in the summer of 1788 put the town on the map and allowed the appellation “Royal Cheltenham Spa”.

Constitutional Club-satire shows
George III with a jug of Cheltenham Water,
Constitutional Restorer 

The Prince of Wales (later George IV) visited in 1806. He gave a ball attended by leading nobility and gentry, one of the largest and most elaborate gatherings. He visited again as George IV in 1821.  Other royalty visited. The Duke and Duchess of Angouleme (daughter and son-in-law of late King Louis XVI) visited in 1811 and 1813; Louis XVIII visited in 1813. Visits by aristocracy and royalty continued well into the Victorian era.

Education was always a major focus. The city’s motto is “Salubritas et Eruditio” (Health and Education). The Free Grammar School was established in 1574 by Richard Pates and endowed by Queen Elizabeth.

Richard Pate, later in
life by an unknown artist
Wikimedia Commons

Sunday School was established in 1787 at the parish church only 7 years after the first of the nation was established in Gloucester. The Duke of Wellington made donations to the National School and School of Industry during his visit in 1816.

During the Georgian/Regency era, the baths were the major draw.  The waters were supposedly good for skin ailments and scurvy.  The baths included salt baths and hot and cold baths. In 1803, a sulphur spring was discovered by Dr. Thomas Jameson and was supposedly good for jaundice and diseases of the liver, dyspepsia, and conditions resulting from living in a hot climate. The Duke of Wellington took the waters during his visits, and Jane Austen visited Cheltenham Spa for 2 weeks in 1816 with her sister Cassandra. Nearby spas included Montpellier Spa (about ½ mile away) and the Imperial Spa which opened in 1818.  Dr. Jenner (of vaccination fame) was a local practitioner for some years.

The inside of the rotunda
of Montpellier Spa
Wikimedia Commons

Of course, while taking the water people expected to be entertained, especially gentry, aristocracy, and royalty. Although never attaining the status of Bath for its social season, Cheltenham Spa certainly provided entertainment. There was a circulating library: Mr. Harward proprietor of a subscription service also let harpsichords, piano-forte’s, and other instruments and provided people to tune them. The social bustle became significant enough that there were elected masters of ceremonies to regulate amusements. The first one was Simon Moreau, Esq. who greeted George III at his visit and held the position until his death in 1810. He wrote the first guide to Cheltenham.

There were assembly rooms used for balls, card parties, and other entertainments.  The Long Room was the original and smallest of the rooms. The Upper and Lower Rooms opened in 1791. The Assembly Rooms were opened July 29, 1816, by the Duke and Duchess of Wellington with a ball attended by 1400 of the aristocracy.

There is a long history of drama in Cheltenham. The Manor Rolls contain an entry in 1612 regarding the production of a play at the Sign of the Crown. Cheltenham saw performances by Mrs. Siddons, Kemble, Kean, and others.  Dramas and tragedies seem to have been especially popular in Cheltenham, particularly works of Shakespeare.  The original theatre in the early 18^th century was located in Coffee House Yard.

George III and his family attended the Cheltenham Theatre in 1788, and he constituted it a Theatre Royal by letters patent. Mrs. Jordan performed in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” during the King’s visit. Lord Byron also patronized the Cheltenham Theatre. Nightly performances were held. The professional troupe of actors was considered extremely proficient. Regular amateur performances also held. Could over-wrought amateur performances, especially if in plays or readings of works by local residents be the origin of the use of “a Cheltenham tragedy”?  The Sadler’s Wells Puppet Theatre was established in 1795 by Samuel Seward, who made automaton figures and marionettes.

Horse racing became established in 1815 with the first organized Flat race held on Notthingham Hill.  In 1818, races were held at Cleeve Hill, and the Gold Cup was established.  (Racing was extremely popular for the next ten years, until religious objections to the evils of horse racing resulted in the grandstand being burned to the ground, and the racecourse was relocated in 1831.)  Other events also were celebrated, such as a balloon ascension in 1813.

Cheltenham was known for its elegant buildings and the wide range and quality of its accommodations. Georgian crescents, houses, villas etc. were constructed. (It is today considered a Regency town). Royal Crescent was built between 1806-1810, and the Promenade (a tree-lined walk that was then developed) in 1818. In 1786, the Paving Commissioners were established to pave and light the streets and keep them clean. The Commissioners’ Act of 1786 allowed 120 oil lamps to be established in the streets. In 1818, gas lamps were put in to light the streets. Hotels and inns were constructed to accommodate increasing number of visitors (up to 15,000 during the season).

Cheltenham maintained its popularity as a spa well into the Victorian era supported by the growth of the railroad. The popularity of horseracing at the nearby track continued, and a music festival was established in 1902. Visitors continue to have a major impact on the town, thanks to the popularity of the music festival and racetrack.

[This post is an Editors' Choice and was originally published on this blog on 29th September, 2014]

British History On Line.  A Topographical Dictionary of England, Samuel Lewis, ed. Published 1848. Pages 562-569.

Internet Archive.  Norman's History of Cheltenham (with Eighty Illustrations) by John Goding.  1863. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green.  Cheltenham: Norman.

Medical Humanities website.  “Jane Austen’s lifelong health problems and Final Illness: New Evidence points to a fatal Hodgkin’s disease and excludes the widely accepted Addisons.”  By A. Upfal.  March 1, 2005.

Political cartoon from Wikimedia Commons

Images from the Library of Congress PD 1923
Files generated with WMUK equipment, Content media by years - Supported by Wikimedia UK - 2014

Picture of Richard Pate Wikimedia Commons

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Lauren Gilbert is the author of HEYERWOOD: A Novel. She lives in Florida with her husband, and is working on another novel which is coming out soon.Visit her website HERE.

John Nash, Designer of Regency London

by Regina Jeffers

John Nash was the man responsible for the shape and development of London. Under Nash's plan, Londoners embraced the concept of Regent's Park in the northern sections and St James's Park in the south, as well as Regent's Street, which connected the two. Trafalgar Square came into being, as did the reconstruction of the Strand. The Regent's Canal was cut, along with its branch to service Regent's Park.

According to most experts, the reversion of Marylebone Park from the Duke of Portland to the Crown in 1811 opened the door to the "metropolitan improvements."

The original idea for the development came from John Fordyce, who had been appointed to the Surveyor General of His Majesty's Land Revenues. Fordyce drew up several plans, but the one from 1809 suggests the need for a new street from Marylebone Park to Carlton House. Fordyce reasoned that the nobility and professional classes required a means to conduct business and that these groups would settle north of the New Road. His creation would provide easier access to Westminster, Parliament, the Law Courts, and the Public Offices.

Fordyce requested development plans from two pairs of architects: Messrs Leverton and Chawner, of the Land Revenue Office, and Messrs Nash and Morgan, of the Office of Woods and Forests. Leverton and Chawner's plans simply extended the Bloomsbury pattern of streets. Meanwhile, Nash and Morgan suggested a landscaped park with peripheral ring of villas and fine houses.

Nash's connection to the Prince Regent is not clearly defined. Nash caught the Prince's attention after he formed a partnership with Humphry Repton, a landscape gardener. Although his partnership with Repton ended in 1800, Nash's career bloomed. In 1806, the Foxite Whig, Lord Robert Spencer, helped Nash secure a position with the Surveyor of the Office of Woods and Forests.

In his personal life, Nash attempted to obtain a divorce from his first wife after he went bankrupt in his business dealings because Mrs Nash did little to economize. His case was refused, but he remarried in 1798, presumably after the first Mrs Nash's death. It was with this second marriage that Nash came to notice of the nobility. He became a member of the Carlton House set.

John Summerson in Georgian London says, "On the strength of a scurrilous cartoon dated 1820, in which the new king [George IV] is shown making love to Mrs Nash on the royal yacht, it has been supposed that a liaison existed  between the two and that Nash's marriage twenty-two years earlier had been arranged for the prince's convenience. Speculation has even gone so far as to suggest that the Pennethorne children whom Nash adopted were in fact the progeny of the prince. All this can safely be discounted, but Nash's accession to wealth and princely favour at a period coincident with his second marriage in 1798 does remain something of a mystery."

Nash's plans sparked the Prince's interest. The future king had grand schemes to outshine Napoleon's Paris. From 1809 - 1826, Nash worked largely for the Prince.

Nash's original plans showed a rectangular layout of streets, anchored by Marylebone Park and St James's on either end. Eventually, the master plan for the area stretched from St James's northwards and included Regent Street, Regent's Park and its neighboring streets, terraces and crescents of elegant town houses and villas.

Nash did not design all the buildings himself, in some instances, these were left in the hands of other architects such as James Pennethorne and Decimus Burton. Nash re-landscaped St James's Park, reshaping the formal canal into the present lake, and giving the park its present form. Regent Street, which linked Portland Place in the north with Carlton House, followed an irregular path. Park Crescent, which frames Portland place, opens into Nash's Park Square. With terraces on the east and west, the north end of the plan opens into Regent's Park.

Around Regent's Park, Nash designed terraces, which conformed to the earlier form of appearing as a single building, as developed by John Wood, the Elder. However, Nash ignored the earlier examples and did not employ orthogonality in relationship to one another.

In Park Village East and Park Village West, completed between 1823-1834, Nash placed a mixture of detached villas, semi-detached houses, both symmetrical and asymmetrical in their design. They are set in private gardens railed off from the street, the roads loop and building are both classical and Gothic in style. No two buildings were the same, and or even in line with their neighbors. The park Villages are often considered a prototype for the Victorian suburbs.

Set up in 1812, Nash became the director of the Regent's Canal Company, which was to provide a canal link from west London to the River Thames in the east. Nash's design had the canal running around the northern edge of Regent's Park. His assistant James Morgan executed the plan, and the Regent's Canal was completed in 1820.

As part of his new position as an official architect to the Office of Works in 1813, Nash advised the Parliamentary Commissioners on the building of new churches from 1818 forward. He produced the design for ten churches, each estimated to cost £10,000 and offered seating for 2000. The plans for these ten churches incorporated both classical and gothic styles. Nash oversaw the building of both the classical All Souls Church, Langham Place (1822-1824) at the northern end of Regent Street and the gothic St Mary's Haggerston (1825-1827), which was bombed during The Blitz in 1941.

Nash was also involved in the building of The King's Opera House (now rebuilt as Her Majesty's Theatre) and the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Nash and George Repton remodeled The King's Opera House between 1816-1818. They added arcades and shops around three sides of the building, the fourth being the still surviving Royal Opera Arcade. The Theatre Royal Haymarket, which was finished in 1821. Although Nash's interior no longer survives, the Theatre Royal Haymarket sports a fine hexastyle Corinthian order portico, facing down Charles II Street to St James's Square.

Nash oversaw the remodeling of Buckingham House to create Buckingham Palace from 1825-1830 and the Royal Mews from 1822-1824, as well as the Marble Arch in 1828. Originally designed as a triumphal arch to stand at the entrance to Buckingham Palace, the Marble Arch was moved at the request of Queen Victoria, who had commissioned Edward Blore to build an addition to the east wing of the palace to meet the needs of her growing family. Marble Arch became the entrance to Hyde Park and The Great Exhibition.

With the death of George IV in 1830, the Treasury began to question the extravagant cost of Buckingham Palace. Nash's original estimate of the building's cost had been £252,690, but by 1829, the cost had risen to £496,169. Although unfinished, the actual cost was £613,269. Nash was denied the Knighthood promised to him. Finally, he retired to his home, East Cowes Castle, on the Isle of Wight. He died on 13 May 1835 and is buried at St James's Church, East Cowes, where the monument to him takes the form of a stone sarcophagus.
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Regina Jeffers loves all things Austen and is the author of several novels, including Darcy’s Temptation, Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion, The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy and Second Chances: The Courtship Wars .

Her website is: www.rjeffers.com

The Regency Review III, by Lady A~, Authoress of 'The Bath Novels of Lady A~'.

Having been quite stuck up a chimney in my last Regency review-of-two, it is fitting that my third little amble through the period should now wind its way down the more refined lanes of English architecture. Fashioned more out of individual taste than by popular demand, and largely owing to the singular style of its architects, the Regency became a landmark era of architectural design; and elegance was its very fitting catchword. From the modest houses of the 'residential squares' of spa resorts to the sweeping prospects of John Nash's grand terraces in town, the finessing of architectural detail spurned a host of theatrical effects. And from classical moldings and cupolas to 'vistas of white or cream-coloured stucco', the evolution of Regency architecture soon singled out its select group of architects-extraordinaire. John Buonarotti Papworth was one such gentleman early admitted to this group, and was renowned for both his views of elegance, coupled with an acute sense of social awareness. Here he expounds his novel theories upon the improvement of laborers' cottages in his work Rural Residences:

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"The habitations of the labouring poor may be rendered ornamental, and the comforts of them increased, at a very trifling charge beyond the cost of common buildings; towards this purpose the annexed plate is designed for four cottages, connected with each other, and under one roof; a mode of building that admits a considerable saving of expense...

The porch in which the husbandman rests after the fatigues of the day, ornamented by some flowering creeper, at once affords him shade and repose; neatness and cleanliness ... bespeak that elasticity of mind, and spring of action, which produce industry and cheerfulness..."

Whether or not the fatigued husbandman did indeed rediscover the 'spring' in his step from such commodious order, Papworth was soon bounding off in another direction, fashioning rural retreats for the gentry. Here he extols his thoughts upon a 'cottage orne':

"The cottage orne is a new species of building, ... and subject to its own laws of fitness and propriety. It is not the habitation of the labourers, but of the affluent; of the man of study, of science, or of leisure; it is often the rallying point of domestic comfort, and, in this age of elegant refinement, a mere cottage would be incongruous with the nature of its occupancy. The lawn, the shrubberies, the gravel walks, and the polish that is given to the garden scenery, connected with such habitations, require an edifice in which is to be found a correspondence of tasteful care: perhaps it is essential that this building should be small, and certainly not to exceed two stories; that it should combine properly with the surrounding objects and appear to be native to the spot, and not one of those crude rule-and-square excrescences of the environs of London, the illegitimate family of town and country."

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Other acclaimed architects associated with the Regency were George Basevi, Decimus Burton, Sir John Soane and Henry Holland. Though the latter died in 1806 (before the Regency began) he has a distinct association with the era. As the son-in-law of  'Capability' Brown, the celebrated landscape gardener, Holland built Claremont [in Esher, Surrey], the house in which Princess Charlotte spent her married life, and the famed Whig men's club, Brooks's, in St James's Street. It was through his association to Brooks's that he was introduced to the Prince of Wales and this brought about Holland's next commission: the rebuilding of Carlton House, the Prince's London residence. Holland also had a hand in redesigning the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which was later designed again, and there his distinct cupola paid tribute to the 'Indian domes of Repton and Nash'.

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The nonpareil of Regency architecture is, undoubtedly, John Nash. As the architect to the Prince Regent, he began his illustrious career in the office of Sir Robert Taylor. After going bankrupt in 1783, he re-established himself designing country houses in 'classical, Gothic and picturesque styles', and in 1796 entered into a partnership with Humphry Repton, who became one of the Regency's most notable landscape gardeners. In 1798 Nash acquired the Prince Regent's patronage and in 1811, as one of his most significant works, he developed Regent's Park into a preeminent residential area. Incorporated into this grand scheme were 'Regent's Canal, churches, artisans' houses, shops and arcades, and the layout of many surrounding streets'.

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Tom Moore, the poet, wrote:

"[The Prince] is to have a villa upon Primrose Hill, connected by a fine street with Carlton House, and is so pleased with this magnificent plan, that he has been heard to say 'it will quite eclipse Napoleon'. "

The villa was never built, but Crabb Robinson, the noted diarist, recorded his opinion upon Regent's Park:

"I really think this enclosure, with the new street leading to it from Carlton House, will give a sort of glory to the Regent's government, which will be more felt by remote posterity than the victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo."

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Nash was made Deputy Surveyor-General between 1813-15, and had also become the Prince Regent's personal architect during that time. Between 1815-1823 he set to work on giving the Regent's palace at Brighton, the Royal Pavilion, an ornate makeover in the 'Hindoo' style, at a cost of nearly two-hundred thousand pounds. The extensions and additions incorporated the Great Kitchen and the Long Gallery (and its staircase). In 1817, the Music and Banqueting Rooms were added. After a 'new sixty-ton dome' was fashioned for the palace, and the entire center part of the building reworked, some critical commentary followed the progress. Mr. Croker of the Admiralty stolidly remarked:

"It is not so much changed as I had been told ... But in the place of the two rooms which stood at angles ... with the rest of the building ... have been erected two immense rooms, sixty feet by forty; one for a music-room and the other for a dining-room. They both have domes; an immense dragon suspends the lustre of one of them. The music-room is most splendid, but I think the other handsomer. They are both too handsome for Brighton, and in an excessive degree too fine for the extent of His Royal Highness's premises. It is a great pity that the whole of this suite of rooms was not solidly built in or near London. The outside is said to be taken from the Kremlin at Moscow; it seems to me to be copied from its own stables, which perhaps were borrowed from the Kremlin. It is, I think, an absurd waste of money, and will be a ruin in half a century or sooner."

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Fortunately Mr. C's foreboding of rack and ruin was itself waylaid to dust, and a Victorian critic made due account of the chinoiserie-styled music-room in proper praise:

"No verbal description, however elaborate, can convey to the mind or imagination of the reader an appropriate idea of the magnificence of this apartment...
 
The windows, which are so contrived as to be illuminated from the exterior, are enriched with stained glass displaying numerous Chinese devices, and similar decorations, in green gold, surround them...

At the [cupola's] apex, expanding in bold relief and vivid colouring, is a vast foliated ornament, bearing a general resemblance to a sunflower, with many smaller flowers issuing from it in all luxuriancy of seeming cultivation. From this, apparently projected from the calyx, depends a very beautiful lustre of cut glass, designed in the pagoda style, and sustaining by its chain-work an immense lamp in the form of the ... water-lily. The upper leaves are of white, ground glass edged with gold, and enriched with transparent devices derived from the mythology of the Chinese; the lower leaves are of a pale crimson hue. At the bottom are the golden dragons in attitudes of flight..."

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The erstwhile critic, Mr. Croker, did however set his seal of approval upon the Pavilion's new kitchens:

"The kitchen and larder are admirable -- such contrivances for roasting, boiling, baking, stewing, frying, steaming and heating; hot plates, hot closets, hot air, and hot hearths, with all manner of cocks for hot water and cold water and warm water and steam, and twenty saucepans all ticketed and labelled, placed up to their necks in a vapour bath."

In 1819, the last improvements to the Pavilion came in the additions of the King's Apartments, and in 1821, Buckingham House became Nash's next palatial project, never to be completed. After it was ordered that it be rebuilt as a royal palace, time ran out on George IV (formerly the Regent) and his personal architect. In 1830 the King died amidst a great groundswell of personal unpopularity, which likewise, and predictably, underwrote Mr. Nash's (regally affiliated) professional demise.

But fond friends despair not! Before dear Prinny goes up in a veritable puff of smoke in his palace, alongside his gifted architect and his glorious era, I shall, in my next review, continue to meander into the Regent's imaginative and extravagant world. I invite you all, most cordially, to join me there, at a later date, in unveiling the politics of  landscape gardening, the Picturesque movement, and the fashions and pleasures of the affluent in both town and country.

Source: Richardson J., The Regency, (Collins, 1973.)
Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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