A gazetteer of Pittville house names in the 19th and early 20th centuries

John Simpson

 

There are over two hundred house names recorded in Pittville from the beginning of the Pittville estate in 1824 until the middle of the twentieth century. Each one is examined in this gazetteer, and I’ve been particularly interested in why a house was given a particular name. It is perhaps surprising that in over 70 per cent of cases it is possible to establish a likely source for the name arising from some aspect of a resident’s or owner’s personal history. In 1848 Edward Jefferies Esdaile named Terhill House on Pittville Circus (more...)

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Index by street

 

The Gazetteer

Abbeywood (name in use 1935 – 50+; now 4 Albert Road). Harry Frederick Charman is first recorded in the national censuses in 1871, when he lived at the Stables behind Queensholme in Pittville Circus Road. He married Laura Jane Allen, from Westbury-on-Severn, in Marylebone, in 1894. From 1897 he became the live-in licensee of the Sudeley Arms on Prestbury Road, before becoming a superintendent of several public houses for the Cheltenham Original Brewery Company in the run-up to the First World War. Harry and his wife Laura moved out of Pittville between 1912 and 1935. In 1935 they returned and moved into their newly built house, which they called Abbeywood. The motivation for the name is not known; Abbeywood is a region of Kent between Woolwich and Erith, and is also the name of a wood (now Ministry of Defence property) near Filton, Bristol, but there are no known links between these places and the Charmans, who were a Prestbury family with associations with Horsham in Surrey. Harry Charman died in 1948, and Laura two years later, when the name Abbeywood was still being used for the house. At some later time the residents adopted the road’s numbering system (introduced in Albert Road around 1939) and the house became listed as 4 Albert Road.

Acton Lodge (name in use 1873 – 92; now Irving House (2), Pittville Circus Road). Susanna Isabella Norris née Allen, the widow of John Hutchinson Norris MD and daughter of the late Capt. John Allen, veteran of the Peninsula campaign and one-time Military Knight of Windsor, moved into Acton Lodge in 1873 from Ryeworth House in Charlton Kings. She had alternated between living in Cheltenham and her home city of London since her husband’s death in 1863. There is no clear motivation for the name Acton House. Susanna Norris left a small bequest in her will (1897) to a Mrs Agnes Turner née Girdwood, widow, of Acton, though the relationship between the two is uncertain.
Other names: Askham House (name in use 1892 – 1950+).

Admington House (name in use 1839 – 72; now 25 Pittville Lawn). In 1834 Corbett Holland bought a newly built house in Pittville, then named 3 Segrave Villas. Five years later, in 1839, he changed its name to Admington House when he acquired Corbett family property in Admington, near Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire, under the terms of the will of his maternal uncle, Michael Corbett. According to the will, he was required to change his surname to Corbett in order to inherit - which he did, and he was subsequently known as Corbett Holland Corbett (see the Cheltenham Chronicle, 16 May). He was one of Cheltenham’s magistrates and subsequently became a Deputy Lieutenant of the county, later living at Admington Hall in Admington, Warwickshire (the village has since been reclassified as part of Gloucestershire).
Other names: Berkeley Court (name in use 1873 – 83); Berkeley House (name in use 1884 – 1950+).

Alipore House (name in use 1934 – 41; 100 Evesham Road). No 100 Evesham Road had been called Walsingham (House) since it was first built. When Sir Arthur Herbert Cuming moved in during 1934 with his wife Beryl Christine, from Hazelhurst, Eldorado Road, he changed the name to Alipore House. Sir Arthur had spent many years in India working for the Indian Civil Service. Having originally joined the service in 1893, he had arrived in India the following year, working as an Assistant Magistrate and Collector in Bengal, then as Deputy Commissioner in Assam. As his career progressed he entered the judiciary, and he was eventually appointed Puisne Judge in Calcutta (now Kolcot) in 1921. When he lived in Calcutta his home address was 2 Alipore Park, in the residential district of Alipore, not far from the Calcutta suburb of Garden Reach, which had already given its name to a Pittville house. After he retired in 1931 he came to Cheltenham, and named his Pittville house after the area of Calcutta in which he had lived while in India. Sir Arthur died in 1941, and the house was thereafter known as 100 Evesham Road (the systematic house-numbering system had been introduced to Evesham Road in 1937).
Other names: Walsingham (name in use 1881 – 1933).

Altidore Stables (name in use 1911 – 23; now Beaver House and Southfield, Marston Road). In the 1881 census this house had been referred to as the “Stables of Altidore Villa”, and had been the home of gardener William Herbert and his family. The more formal name Altidore Stables is recorded in the 1911 census, when another gardener, Thomas Johnson, lived there with his wife Susan. The purely functional name was superseded by Horstead House Cottage in the mid 1920s, when the house in whose grounds it was built changed its own name from Altidore Villa to Horstead House.
Other names: Horstead House Cottage (name in use 1926 – 41); Fenwick Lodge Cottage (name in use 1943 – 50+).

Altidore Villa (name in use 1866-1925; now Brompton House, East Approach Drive). Also Altidore (1871 – 1900). The house name was borrowed from that of eighteenth-century Altidore Castle in County Wicklow, south of Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. The first resident of the Pittville house was Belfast-born merchant William Bruce Ferguson and his family. Although William Ferguson spent much of his career in Guyana, his mother’s family, the Brownriggs, lived in Rockhampton, Co. Wicklow, about five miles from Altidore Castle, and so the name will have become familiar from frequent visits. The house name appears to have no specific meaning, other than generally to connote the elevated situation (Latin altus high) and hence fine views available from the property.
Other names: Horstead House (name in use 1924 – 41); Fenwick Lodge (name in use 1941 – 50+).

Alwington Stables (name in use 1913 – 14, 1920 – 5; now The Mews, Malden Road). In an unusual turn, the residential accommodation known previously as Tidmington House Stables seems to have been split into two residences, one from 1913 called Alwington Stables, and the other called Tidmington Stables, both probably occupied by members of the Eager family. Equally curiously, the main house in whose grounds the properties were located was by then no longer known as either Alwington Villa or Tidmington House, but as Sligo House. Before it was known as Tidmington House Stables, the property had been called Alwington Villa Stables.

Alwington Villa (name in use 1844 – 95; now Sligo House, 2 Wellington Road). Alwington Villa was named by its first resident, Canadian Charles James Irwin Grant de Longueuil, later 6^th Baron de Longueuil, who lived there with his wife and baby in 1844. He named his house in Pittville after Alwington House in Kingston, Ontario, his family home. The Grants had been temporarily dispossessed of Alwington House when it was commandeered as the official residence of the Governor General of the United Provinces of Canada, while Kingston was the nation’s capital. In 1844 it was returned to the family. The 5^th Baron had in turn taken the name Alwington from the New Brunswick home of his wife Caroline Coffin, itself called Alwington Manor. The New Brunswick house was built by Caroline’s father, General John Coffin, who had named it after his ancestral home in the village of Alwington in North Devon.
Other names: Tidmington House (name in use 1889 – 95); Sligo House (name in use 1897 to present).

Alwington Villa Stables (name in use 1857 – 87; now 22-4 and The Mews, Malden Road). Documentary evidence for stabling used as residential accommodation is often patchy in comparison with houses, and this applies to Alwington Villa Stables and its successors on this site. The stables behind  Alwington Villa were certainly used as residential accommodation in 1857, as evidenced by a reference in the Cheltenham Mercury of that year. The name is self-evident, as the accommodation is a converted stable building in the grounds of Alwington Villa. The Alwington Villa Stables lasted as long as Alwington Villa lasted; when it was changed by new residents in 1889 to Tidmington House, the name of the stable block changed to Tidmington House Stables.

Amberley Court (name in use 1939 – 50+; now apparently Amberley Cottage, Clarence Square). Around 1939 the site on which Amberley House stood acquired two smaller accommodations, Amberley Court and Amberley Gate; the precise topography of the site is currently uncertain. The conventional names were presumably given by the owner of Amberley House. Widow Jemima (“Minnie”) Jessie Corsie Shaw (née Mowat) was the first occupant of Amberley Court, with her son Edgar Grenville, in 1939. She remained there until 1942, the year her son died. At some point after 1950 the name of the property was apparently changed to Amberley Cottage. See Amberley House.

Amberley Gate (name in use 1941 – 5; now apparently part of Amberley House or Amberley Cottage, Clarence Square). Around 1939 the site on which Amberley House stood acquired two smaller accommodations, Amberley Court and Amberley Gate; the precise topography of the site is currently uncertain. The conventional names were presumably given by the owner of Amberley House. Mrs Blanch Meredith is listed as the first occupant of Amberley Gate, in 1941, when she, her son, scientific-instrument maker Denis Lello Meredith, and her daughter Jean Hensman, moved there from 4 Clarence Square. When Mrs Meredith left Amberley Gate, she went to Montpellier Parade, and subsequently to Sydenham Villas Road. The name Amberley Gate was apparently short-lived.

Amberley House (name in use 1853 to present; 49 Clarence Square). Amberley is the name of a village in Gloucestershire, near Stroud and west of Minchinhampton. The house name was conferred in 1853 by well-known local solicitor John Brend Winterbotham and his family, though they had lived there for fifteen years in the house (as 49 Clarence Square) before it was so named. John Winterbotham was baptised in Woodchester, next to Amberley, in 1805, and the extended family had property and influence in Amberley and the surrounding region for many years after this.

Anlaby House (name in use 1842 – 1919; demolished, on the site of the present Anlaby Court, 42-80 Evesham Road). ). Also Anlaby (1871 – 1919), Anlaby Court Hotel (1922 – 36), Anlaby Court (1938 to present). Anlaby is the name of a suburb of Kingston-upon-Hull (Hull) in East Yorkshire. The first owner of the Pittville house was Thomas Bodley, latterly of Brighton, and he was responsible for naming the house. Thomas’s family had strong connections with the Hull area. His parents lived in the suburb of Anlaby, Hull, where they died in 1819 and 1829 respectively, though their business interests had been in the family business in gold lace, Bodley, Etty, and Bodley of Lombard Street, London. Thomas Bodley was married to Martha Etty, cousin of artist William Etty (York-born and apprenticed in Hull) and was also involved in the family business. His brother William was for many years a physician in Hull. Anlaby House near Hull, a Georgian listed building in Anlaby, Hull, is now an apartment complex, but was itself not owned by the Bodley family, but the family’s association with the suburb of Hull is responsible for the Pittville house name.

Apsley House (name in use 1844 – 74; now Tower House, Pittville Circus). The first occupants of Apsley House and Apsley Villa (now Apsley Lodge), in 1844, were members of the same family (the Lutwidges and the Pooles). The houses were erected by different builders, but faced each other at the western end of the Circus. Major Skeffington Lutwidge had seen extensive service with the Honourable East India Company and was the nephew of Admiral Skeffington, remembered for training the young Nelson; he was also more distantly related to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (“Lewis Carroll”). His sister Henrietta had married Charles Poole, and her daughter Mary lived with the Lutwidges. The name Apsley House was probably given by builder Edward Cope, who owned it until his death in 1849. It is likely to derive from the Duke of Wellington’s London establishment Apsley House at Hyde Park (also known informally as “No 1, London”). Several houses in the country were named Apsley House, after the British military hero and statesman, and his name is well attested in Cheltenham’s road network. London’s Apsley House was itself built by and named after Henry George Bathurst, Lord Apsley, and ultimately 4^th Earl Bathurst, like Joseph Pitt a West Country MP, representing Cirencester from 1812 until 1834. The name is ultimately said to derive from the village of Apsley, near Pulborough in West Sussex, where the Bathursts had family connections.
Other names: Steeniecot (name in use 1875 – 81); Luddenham (name in use 1881 – 93); St Paul’s Vicarage (name in use 1894 – 1914); Tower House (name in use 1916 to present).

Apsley Lodge (name in use 1873 to present; Pittville Circus). The house name was changed from Apsley Villa to Apsley Lodge around 1873 with the arrival of Colonel Henry Disney Ellis, recently retired from service with the 1^st Battalion, 9^th Regiment of Foot, who served at Sebastopol. Col. Ellis died soon afterwards, in 1877, and his wife Esther remained at Apsley Lodge until her death in 1918, aged 88.
Other names: Apsley Villa (name in use 1844 – 73).

Apsley Villa (name in use 1844 – 73; now Apsley Lodge, Pittville Circus). The name Apsley Villa is presumably a secondary formation after that of its neighbour Apsley House. The name of Apsley Villa was changed to Apsley Lodge when new residents arrived around 1873.
Other names: Apsley Lodge (name in use 1873 to present) (name in use 1841 – 83).

Ash Priors (name in use 1883 – 1950+; now Priors Lodge, Pittville Circus). Ash Priors is the name of a village near Taunton in Somerset. The Pittville house name dates from the arrival of Major-General Henry Shewell, his wife Eleanor, and their children in 1883. Although no specific association between the family and Ash Priors has been identified, it is significant that both Henry Shewell’s mother Emma and his wife Eleanor were born in Somerset, though in both cases in the north of the county, and the name is likely to commemorate their affiliation to the county. It is perhaps coincidental that the Somerset village of Ash Priors is only a few miles away from Terhill, then the name of the next-door house in Pittville Circus.
Other names: Kyrle Villa (name in use 1849 – 69); Phayrecot (name in use 1867 – 83); Nightingale House (name in use 1917 – 19).

Askham Court: see Shirley House (name in use 1862 – 1950+); Southam Lawn (name in use 1851); Southam Villa (name in use 1861).

Askham House (name in use 1892 – 1950+; now Irving House (2), Pittville Circus Road). Acton Lodge was renamed Askham House when Captain Edward Thompson, formerly of the 95^th Regiment, his wife Anne, and their daughter moved in at the very end of 1892. The family had previously been living at Overton House, Bayshill, in Cheltenham. Captain Thompson came originally from Yorkshire: he was often referred to as Capt. Thompson of Bramham, near Wetherby in West Yorkshire, where he and Anne brought up their family. But he himself was born and brought up in Bilbrough, north-east of Bramham and nearer to York. Bilbrough neighbours the two Yorkshire villages of Askham Richard and Askham Bryan, and for many years in the first half of the nineteenth century Capt. Thompson’s father, Robert Stephen Thompson MA, was at the same time vicar of the first and perpetual curate of the second. The name Askham House was a reminder to Captain Thompson of his life south-west of York by the two Askhams, where he grew up.
Other names: Acton Lodge (name in use 1873 – 92).

Atherstone Lawn (1886 – 1907; now 88 Portland Street). Atherstone Lawn probably derives from the name of the town of Atherstone in northern Warwickshire (though other places with the same name include the villages of Atherstone-upon-Stour in southern Warwickshire, and Atherstone in Somerset). Many Cheltenham residents would have been familiar with the celebrated Atherstone Hunt. However, the mechanism by which the name was conferred on the Pittville house is uncertain. Originally the house was called Cyntaf House, and when it fell vacant in 1881 the Cheltenham Annuaire continued to list it as Cyntaf House until 1886, when the name became Atherstone Lawn, even though it still remained empty (in fact, this change probably relates to late 1885, when data for the Annuaire will have been collected). From Spring 1886, and for several years subsequently, the house was occupied by Mary O’Callaghan, widow of Dublin barrister Isaac O’Callaghan. But she did not name the house as it was called Atherstone Lawn in advertisements before she took up the lease. A curious coincidence involves the name of the popular novel Atherstone Priory (1864), by the unknown L. N. (perhaps “Ellen”) Comyn; members of a Comyn family lived in Cheltenham for several decades up to the 1860s, when Stephen Comyn and his family lived at 38 Evesham Road, just north of Atherstone Lawn. The name change from Cyntaf House appears to be another example of a Pittville house being renamed in an attempt to make it more attractive to potential occupants (see perhaps also Tracy House). Although the name survived only a few years into the twentieth century, it enjoyed a new lease of life when the Creese family (Alfred Creese, draper, and his family) moved from Atherstone Lawn in Pittville to Montpellier Parade, when they named their new house (now the home of Cheltenham’s New Club) Atherstone Lawn.
Other names: Cyntaf House (1833 – 85), Deerhurst (1915 to present).

Aubervie (name in use 1876 – 1950+; demolished, now 26-40 East Approach Drive). The house name Aubervie probably derives from the village of Aubervie near Grenoble, though another small village called Aubervie east of Rheims was the scene of fighting in WW1. The first occupants of the house in Pittville, Joseph Gutteridge Stevenson Esq. and his family, were well travelled in Europe, but no particular association has been traced to either village. Almost as soon as they moved into Aubervie, in 1877, “Mr. & Mrs. J. G. & family” set off for Germany (Cheltenham Looker-On, 7 July) and two years later they travelled to “Neuëahr” (probably Bad Neuenahr-Arhweiler) in Germany. In further support of their continental credentials: their daughter Florence May had been born around Florence in 1849, and their daughter Sidney Augusta was married in the British Embassy in Paris in 1860.

Aubervie Cottage (name in use 1924 – 45+; at site of 26-40 East Approach Drive, but now demolished). Before 1900 “cottages” in Pittville were typically small houses which were typically the only house on a site; by around 1900 the description started to be applied to secondary houses built in the grounds of a larger house, such as Amberley Cottage, and Aubervie Cottage. Aubervie Cottage was named in 1924, when Thomas and Annie Glassey moved in. Neither Aubervie or Aubervie Cottage remains.

The Aviary (also Aviary) (name in use 1837 – 63; now Cranley, Wellington Square). This was one of a set of three adjacent houses (with Laurel Lodge and Percy House) built for Eleanor Wallace, widow of Hill Wallace, one-time Captain of the 14th Regiment of Foot, of Malone House, Belfast, and her daughter Eliza (also Elizabeth) Wallace. The reason for calling the house The Aviary is uncertain: contemporary large-scale maps do not indicate that the large garden had an aviary. Aviaries were common garden accessories among the wealthier classes at the time, but it would have been an unusual and perhaps unparalleled name for a house. It was not until later, around 1850, that the Jessop brothers called their nursery establishment in St James’s Square, Cheltenham “The Aviaries” (they were also “dealers in birds”), and slightly later “The Aviary”. This tempts investigation about other motivations. By the early 1840s Eliza Wallace had attained some local notoriety as a mesmerist; in the next few years she contributed accounts of medical cures achieved under the effect of hypnotism to The Zoist, a mesmerist journal edited by John Elliotson, expelled from his post at University College Hospital in 1838 for mesmeric practices. As a proponent of animal magnetism, the founder of Mesmerism, Anton Mesmer, was known to have an affinity with birds: he had a tame canary, and had installed an aviary and dove-cotes in his garden, according to a report by Mozart’s father Leopold. Maybe Eliza Wallace wanted to cast Mesmer’s influence over the house by way of its name. As the 1840s wore on, Eliza Wallace began to move on, developing a technique (later patented) for producing coloured glass decorative “architecture”, which she exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851. On the crest of her success, she set up a “Ladies’ Guild” in central London with Octavia Hill’s mother, to encourage women to gain an income from their own craft- or other work.  Her brother Hill, sister-in-law Maria, and her sister Ellen, also lived in Pittville.
Other names: Cranley Lodge (name in use 1864 – 1950+).

Avondale House (name in use 1840 to present; Wellington Square). Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Barron had the house built in the mid 1830s, and moved in soon after with his daughter Helen. Thomas Barron was born in St Andrew’s, Fife, the eldest son of William Barron, Professor of Philosophy at the University, and his wife Margaret Stark of nearby Balmerino, and had spent his career in Bengal in the service of the East India Company. It is likely that the house name Avondale derives from the name of the scenic valley of Avon Water in South Lanarkshire, around the historic market town of Strathaven: the same place-name was used later in the title “Duke of Clarence and Avondale” used by King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. Thomas Barron’s daughter Helen married Frederick Perry, who wrote and published dances, including the Avondale Schottische, inscribed to his future wife “Miss Barron”. One of Thomas Barron’s brothers, John Baron [sic], a doctor practising in Gloucester before moving to Cheltenham, was Edward Jenner’s biographer.

Axholme (name in use 1911 – 24; Dorset Villa, 83 Pittville Lawn). This short-lived name bridged the thirteen-year gap between the earlier name for the house, Dorset Villa, and a later variant, Dorset House. Dorset Villa was changed to Axholme on the arrival in 1911 of Barnard Platts and his family. He was a Lincolnshireman, born at Gainsborough, on the edge of the low-lying area of Lincolnshire stretching up towards South Yorkshire called the Isle of Axholme. Barnard’s father was born deeper in Axholme, at Belton-in-Axholme, and his family had lived in the area for many years. So when the Platts moved into their Pittville house they brought with them as their new house name the name of their native region of Lincolnshire, commemorating their northern-eastern past. After they left Pittville the name Axholme remained until the mid 1920s, before (partially) reverting to its older name, as Dorset House.
Other names: Dorset Villa (name in use 1843 to present), Dorset House (name in use 1925 – 50+).

Balgowan House (name in use 1859 – 1902; now Fairhavens Court, Pittville Circus Road). In 1859 Sir James Archibald Hope moved with his wife Christiana and his children from Vallombrosa at the eastern end of Pittville Circus Road nearer to the Circus itself and into the newly erected Balgowan House. The name Balgowan House derives from the village of Balgowan (and the house there named Balgowan House), halfway between Perth and Crieff, in Perth and Kinross. Balgowan was the seat of General Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch (1748 – 1843), to whom James Archibald Hope (a member of the senior branch of the Hope clan in Scotland) was apparently indirectly related through Graham’s mother, Lady Christian Hope, daughter of Charles, 1^st Earl of Hopetoun. But there were other links with the Grahams of Balgowan, as James Hope was Thomas Graham’s aide-de-camp during the Peninsula War, was with Graham at Cuidad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and other actions, and was promoted to Assistant Adjutant-General at Salamanca when Graham was forced to go on sick leave. James Hope retired on half-pay in 1839 before serving in Canada from 1841 and being promoted to Colonel of the 9^th Foot in 1848 and to full General in 1859. Hope’s Military Memoirs of an Infantry Officer 1808-16 (1833) were well received as an engaging account of action during the Peninsula War: Hope signed the foreword to this work from Perth. The Pittville house name recognises James Hope’s association with the Graham family at Balgowan through kinship and the camaraderie of life as a soldier in Wellington’s army.
Other names: Balgowan Lodge (name in use 1859 – 60); Northerwood (name in use 1903 – 1946+).

Balgowan Lodge (name in use 1859 – 60; now Fairhavens Court, Pittville Circus Road). A name recorded from 1859 to 1860 in the Cheltenham Annuaire for the house otherwise called Balgowan House.
Other names: Balgowan House (name in use 1859 – 1902); Northerwood (name in use 1903 – 1946+).

Banchory Lodge (name in use 1837 – 41; now Evesham House, 21 Wellington Road/Little Evesham House, Wellington Road). The first owner and occupant of Banchory Lodge was the Hon. Andrew Ramsay, with his wife Rachel. Andrew Ramsay was the fifth son of the eighth Earl of Dalhousie (Dalhousie Castle is just south of Edinburgh), the senior branch of the Ramsay family. Andrew Ramsay named his house after Banchory Lodge in the town of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, commemorating a property owned by the Balmain branch of the Ramsay family (the Burdett-Ramsays). In 1842 Andrew Ramsay and his wife moved to Dorset Villa in Pittville.
Other names: Evesham House (name in use 1841 to present).

Beaufort (name in use 1890 – 1928; this was gradually superseded from 1897 to the present by Beaufort House, West Approach Drive). Originally 2 Beaufort Villas, but as Nos 1, 3, and 4 Beaufort Villas assumed house names by 1890 (Bexley, Dunboyne, and Gundulf), this house came to be known simply as Beaufort, or Beaufort House. There are numerous street and house names in Cheltenham incorporating the name Beaufort; these “probably commemorate [Henry Somerset] the 7th Duke of Beaufort, 1792-1853, who had several local connections and was MP for West Glos. in 1835” (Hodsdon, Gazetteer). The Gazetteer also points out that “in the Fairview/Pittville border area, Beaufort names may have started with Beaufort House, listed 1841 in Union Street”.

Beckaford House (name in use 1913 – 1990+; now Park House, Wellington Square). Also Beckaford (1939 – 50+). The name Beckaford House derives from the name of a farm, Beckaford, Manaton, near Newton Abbot in Devon, recorded by this name since at least the 1841 census; nearby landmarks include Beckaford Bridge (1857) and Beckaford Hill (1870). The specific link with Beckaford House in Pittville comes through the Delves Broughton family. Vernon Lammonerie Delves Broughton moved into Beckaford House in Wellington Square with his wife and cousin Rhoda Delves Broughton in 1913. At the same time, Rhoda’s brother Brian Delves Broughton lived in Beckaford Bungalow, on the farm known as Beckaford in Manaton, Devon (Kelly’s Directory, 1914), having previously lived nearby.
Other names: Dover House (name in use 1874 – 96); Inver (name in use 1897 – 1910).

Beechmount (name in use 1905 – 50+; Day Nursery, Berkhamstead School, Pittville Circus Road). Also Beechmont 1912 – 22). North-countryman Frederick Burgoyne Wallace moved into No 1 Fern Bank at the eastern end of Pittville Circus Road with his wife and baby daughter around 1891. He presumably owned the house, because in 1895 and from 1898 until 1903 it was let out while the Wallaces lived on the coast at Folkestone for a few years, before returning to 1 Fern Bank in 1906. But when they returned, they changed the name of their house, to the name of the house, Beechmount, where they had been living on Shornecliffe Road in Folkestone. The origin of the Folkestone name has not been investigated, but the name Beechmount in Kent is likely to be related to the old Sevenoaks estate of that name owned by the Lambarde family from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Belgrano (name in use 1936 – 50+; on the site of Selkirk Court, Pittville Circus). In the 1930s two adjacent houses, Belgrano and Pejoda, were built on vacant land between Pittville Circus and the main arm of Pittville Circus Road. Belgrano was occupied by Charles James Relton and his second wife Mary Ethel Rollin (née Edwards). Immediately after his first marriage, in 1887, Charles had left Britain for South America with his new wife, Laura Josephine. The newlyweds were soon settled in their new house, in the Belgrano suburb of Buenos Aires, where in 1898 their son Douglas was born. After working in Buenos Aires as a stockbroker for several years, the family returned to England. Their son Douglas was killed in the First World War, in France, and Charles’s wife Laura died at their home at Hyde Park Gate in 1919. Charles later remarried, and when he and Mary Ethel moved to Pittville he called his new house after Belgrano, the suburb of Buenos Aires when he had first lived with his first wife, and where they had brought up their family.

Bennington (name in use 1864 – 1918; now 16 Albert Road). Bennington is named after the village of Bennington (now Benington) in Hertfordshire, the birthplace of John Chesshyre, father of Charles John Chesshyre, who moved into the new house in Albert Road with his family in 1864. Charles Chesshyre, solicitor, was once the political agent of Col. Berkeley (see Berkeley Court), a Cheltenham Town Councillor, and member of the Cheltenham Corporation, and it was at his suggestion that Bennington Street in Cheltenham, between the High Street and St Margaret’s Road, was so named about 1868.

Berkeley Court (name in use 1873 – 83; now 25 Pittville Lawn). The house name was changed (from Admington House) with the arrival of Joseph Johnson and his family, from 14 (now 65) Pittville Lawn in 1873. Johnson was born in Warwickshire, but spent many years as a farmer in Adelaide, South Australia, before returning to England in 1859. The motivation for the new name was the prominent Berkeley family commemorated in many Cheltenham street names, etc.: Col. William Fitzhardinge Berkeley (1786-1857) entered the House of Lords as Lord Segrave in 1831 (Hodsdon, Gazetteer), and Craven Fitzhardinge Berkeley served as Cheltenham’s MP almost continuously from 1832 to 1855. Lord Segrave’s Cheltenham residence was German Cottage, on North Place just south of Pittville; in the winter of 1840 his younger brother Craven leased nearby Pittville House. See also Admington House, Berkeley House, and Nos 1 and 2 Berkeley Villas (now 19 and 21 Pittville Lawn).
Other names: Admington House (name in use 1839 – 72); Berkeley House (name in use 1884 – 1950+).

Berkeley Hall (name in use 1867 – 1926; now North Hall, Pittville Circus Road). William Wallace had run his school, Berkeley Villa, from his home at 3 Berkeley Street (between Albion Street and the High Street) since the 1850s. In 1867 he moved lock, stock, and barrel into new premises in Pittville Circus Road, and upscaled his school’s name from Berkeley Villa to Berkeley Hall, though “hall” was not a term usually associated with Pittville houses (it only occurs twice, quite late in the nineteenth century). Berkeley comes from the name of the street in which the original school building was located, and ultimately from the name of the Berkeley family (see Berkeley Court). After Wallace’s departure, the school was continued under the Rev. Henry de Romestin MA (Oxon), in 1871 with an undermaster and eleven pupils.
Other names: Kirkella (name in use 1901 – 39); North Hall (name in use 1923 to present).

Berkeley House (name in use 1884 – 1950+, now 25 Pittville Lawn). The house name was changed from Berkeley Court when Mrs Ellen Rae, widow of merchant William Maples Rae (d. 1882), moved here with her family in 1884 from 13 (now 63) Pittville Lawn. See also Gwernant Villa, Pittville Circus Road (name in use 1861 – 1950+).
Other names: Admington House (name in use 1839 – 72); Berkeley Court (name in use 1873 – 83).

Berkeley House Cottage (name in use 1935 – 45+; now Berkeley Mews Cottage or 1 Berkeley Mews, 25 and 27 Malden Road). It was common in Pittville for an old stable block to be renamed “Cottage”, though this happened quite late with Berkeley House Stables, situated at the rear of the plot on which Berkeley House was built on Pittville Lawn. Harry Taylor took over the old Berkeley House Stables (under that name) in 1922, and thirteen years later the local paper listed the birthday of his son Robert Henry Taylor, on their children’s page, “Uncle Charlie’s Corner”; his address is listed there, for the first time, as Berkeley House Cottage.
Other names: Berkeley House Stables (name in use 1893 – 1938).

Berkeley House Stables (name in use 1893 – 1938; now Berkeley Mews Cottage or 1 Berkeley Mews, 25 and 27 Malden Road). The stable buildings at the rear of Berkeley House in Pittville Lawn are mentioned at least as early as 1871, and were inhabited by 1893. The functional name mirrors that of many stable blocks in Pittville converted for residential accommodation.
Other names: Berkeley House Cottage (name in use 1935 – 45+).

Berkeley Villa (name in use 1841 – 2; 1861; now 21 Pittville Lawn). A name applied to what became 2 Berkeley Villas by the Johnson family in 1841/2, when the conjoined 1 Berkeley Villas was temporarily called Northumberland Villa. In general both were referred to as 1 or 2 Berkeley Villas, though in the 1861 census 1 Berkeley Villas (now 19 Pittville Lawn) was recorded as “Berkeley Villa”. The name Berkeley derives from the Gloucestershire Berkeley family: see Berkeley Court.
Other names: Pittville Nursing Home (name in use 1939 – 49+).

Bexley (name in use 1887-1917; now Richmond, West Approach Road). Formerly 1 Beaufort Villas, this house name was changed mid-occupancy at a time when other houses in the road were also adopting names rather than numbers (see Dunboyne and Gundulf). The Searle family had lived at the house since John Searle bought it when it was first offered for sale in the mid 1850s. In 1887 his son James Searle, an officer in the local militia, introduced the name Bexley in commemoration of the family’s links with the village of Bexley in Kent:  John Searle had been registered to vote in Blackheath because of property he owned in Bexley in the 1850s and probably for many years later.Other names: Berkeley House Cottage (name in use 11935 – 45+).
Other names: Claremont (name in use 1907 – 19); Highbury (name in use 1913 – 15); Mount Sorrell (name in use 1931 – 48).

Bilbrook House (name in use 1832 to present; Winchcombe Street). The house (originally Bilbrooke House) was probably (though not definitely) named after Bilbrook House in Bilbrook, near Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, the home for much of the 1820s and 1830s of the Rev. John Clemson Egginton. John Egginton married Anne James of Newnham, Gloucestershire at Newnham in 1830, and in 1837 the couple moved from Staffordshire to Wellington Villa (now 19 Wellington Square), Pittville. The name Bilbrook House has been used of the Cheltenham house since 1832, when the Misses Heaven transferred their school for young ladies there from Belle Vue House in Gloucester. Perhaps the Rev. Egginton was involved in the establishment of the Pittville school: his wife and Ann Heaven both came from Newnham/Westbury-upon-Severn. See Wellington Villa.

Blenheim House (name in use 1834 to present; Blenheim House, 1 Evesham Road). The name Blenheim House appears in the earliest sale advertisements for the Pittville house in 1834 (Cheltenham Chronicle, 18 September, etc.), in which house agent Mr Young, and builder Mr Sheldon hope to find “a family of distinction” for  the house “situate in the most preferable part of the Pittville Estate”. Blenheim became a fashionable name for streets and houses after Marlborough’s celebrated victory at the Battle of Blenheim (1704; German Blindheim, near Höchstädt in Bavaria). Marlborough was rewarded by the nation with the gift of Blenheim House near Woodstock in Oxfordshire (then and now often referred to as Blenheim Palace). Another Blenheim House was advertised for let, sale, or exchange in Cheltenham in March 1821 (Cheltenham Chronicle), built by Henry Haines (see Heathfield Lodge and Pittville Mansion, and also Hodsdon, Gazetteer). The parade of five terraced houses built on the Evesham Road in the later 1830s, north of Blenheim House, are likely to have been named after the house. See Wellington house names for the similar recognition of military success.

Blenheim House Stables (next in use 1891 – 1929). The 1891 census records that Frank Essex, an engine-driver, lived at Blenheim House Stables with his wife Marion. As elsewhere in Pittville, “Stables” was a common name given at the turn of the century to secondary accommodation on a larger site. In 1861 this structure was listed as “Back Stable” at Blenheim House, and was lived in by stable-keeper Alfred Chambers. Later, these were often known as “Cottages”.
Other names: Evesham House Stables (name in use 1906 – 29); Evesham House Cottage (name in use 1934 – 45+).

Boclair (name in use 1904 – 12; now 51 Pittville Lawn). This name’s genesis is quite unusual for Pittville, in that it was not conferred by the first resident to live in the house under this name (Rivett Francis Guise and his wife Mary), but by the second resident, widow Ellen Newham. Ellen was presumably the owner of the property, and only lived in it herself after first renting it out to the Guises. She named the house Boclair in memory of the family of her husband, Peter Newham, who had died in Bath in 1886. Peter’s parents, Daniel and Janetta (Jeanette) Newham, had lived on the estate of Boclair, in the parish of New Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, north-west of Glasgow, at the end of the eighteenth century. Curiously, Peter’s great nephew, William Edward Newham, a civil engineer, named his house in San Diego, California, Boclair, when he lived there in the late nineteenth century.

Broadway (name in use 1934 – 42; now 92 Evesham Road). The right-hand side of a semi-detached pair of which its counterpart has the equally simple name of Greenfield, in contrast to the more colourful names given to the other two pairs of semi-detached houses built alongside at the same time (Lomond/Kileague and Longhope/Rosslyn at Nos 82/84 and 86/88 respectively). The name Broadway does not seem particularly significant to either of the first residents, William Arthur Baker, a Director of the old Ward’s drapery shop at Boot’s Corner, of a Hastings and earlier Kentish family, and his wife Ellen. Although Evesham Road runs towards Evesham and Broadway, there are no apparent family links between the Bakers and this or other Broadway village or street names. But perhaps compare Parkways, on the link road between Clarence and Wellington Squares, itself perhaps influenced by the spirit of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1932, and the sense that bare ribbon development, rather than broad approach avenues, did not represent the most elegant form of town planning for places like Cheltenham. The house Broadway stood facing the northern end of the first section of Pittville Park and Gardens.

Brompton House: see Altidore Villa (name in use 1866 – 1925); Horstead House (name in use 1941 – 50+); Fenwick Lodge (name in use 1941 – 50+).

Burston House (name in use 1886 to present; Pittville Circus). Also Burston (1898 – 1903). William Simms Bull and his wife brought up their children from around 1865 at Burston Hall, Burston, near Sandon, south-east of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. In the mid 1880s they moved to Pittville, and changed the name of their new house from 1 Oakley Villas to Burston House (at much the same time 2 Oakley Villas became Kingsmuir). Burston Hall in Burston is now a Grade II listed building, as are its neighbours Burston House and Burston Lodge.
Other names: St Anne's Nursery (College) (1) (name in use 1886 to present).

Byron Court: see Sunnyside (name in use 1874 – 1950+); Pengwern College Annexe (name in use 1926 – 38).

Camden House (name in use 1837 – 1889 and 1950+ to present; Clarence Square). Named in a series with Camden Lodge and Camden Villa.
Other names: (Holy) Trinity Vicarage (name in use 1891 – 1950+).

Camden Lodge (name in use 1835 to present; Clarence Road). Named in a series with Camden House and Camden Villa.

Camden Villa (name in use 1834 to present; Wellington Lane). This, the central of the three “Camden” houses in or near Clarence Road, was apparently the first to be named, in an advertisement placed in late 1834 by the owner, William Ward (who had also bought next-door Camden House). The fashionable name would therefore seem to predate the first occupant, and probably derives not from the well-known antiquarian William Camden (1551-1623), but from the noble Camden family, ultimately of Camden Place, Kent, ennobled in the mid-eighteenth century, or perhaps from the older Campden family of Chipping Campden. Both families owned buildings which incorporated their name, such as Cam(p)den House, and other uses of the house name are found. Nearby Camden Terrace, between North Place and Portland Street, may be slightly later (1839 or earlier).

Capel Court (name in use 1839 – 58; now Malden Court, 71 Pittville Lawn). Capel (also Capell) is the family name of the Earls of Essex, and the house name commemorates the property’s historical relationship with the Capel family. The Earls of Essex were substantial landowners in and around Cheltenham, and Joseph Pitt bought land north of the town – much of which became Pittville – from the family. The land on which this house was built was acquired by Pitt directly from the Capel family: William Anne Capell was the 4^th Earl (1732 – 99) and George Capell-Coningsby the 5^th Earl (1757 – 1839) (ninth creation). The name may also recall Capel Court, off Bartholomew Lane in the City of London, since 1802 an informal name for the new London Stock Exchange first situated in the Court: this Capel Court was named in 1503 in memory of another member of the Capel family, Sir William Capel, an ancestor of the Earls of Essex. Capel Court in Pittville Lawn was occupied by Staffordshire and Gloucestershire JP Stubbs Wightwick (see also Westwick), on whose death the name was changed by the new owner Thomas Champion to Malden Court.
Other names: Malden Court (name in use 1858 to present).

Carlton (name in use 1926 – 1950+; now Carlton House, Pittville Circus Road). Also Carlton House (1937 to present). Amy Isabel Shakespear advertised for a house-parlourmaid soon after she moved into Carlton (previously Prestbury Villa) on Pittville Circus Road in 1926. She had been widowed for a while, and chose the new house name herself. Her own mother was born Isabel Catherine Cobbold, in Eye, in Suffolk, and she and Amy’s father, Robert Knipe Cobbold, had moved the family from Eye to Carlton, a suburb of Saxmundham, in the 1830s. About twenty years later Amy’s mother Isabel moved to Cheltenham with her husband, Robert Alfred Booker, a merchant and sometime woolstapler, and had died in the town in 1905. Her daughter Amy Isabel remembered the village her mother grew up in when she named her new house Carlton.
Other names: Prestbury Villa (name in use 1869 – 1932).

Casa Echalaz (name in use 1897 – 1914; now 102 Evesham Road). The older name Evesham Lawn was changed to Casa Echalaz (Mexican Spanish: “the Echalaz residence”) in 1897, when Kate Newman Buddicom née Clark, widow of the late Robert Joseph Buddicom (died 1895) moved into the property on Evesham Road. Echalaz commemorated a family name in the Clark family: Kate’s father was Samuel Juaniz Y Echalaz Clark, a silk merchant in London. His parents were Samuel Clark of Devon and Josepha Rosetta Juaniz Y Echalaz, daughter of a Mexican merchant who had settled in Devon (probably Vincente Juaniz Y Echalaz), who married Joyce Hickes at Exeter in 1764. Amongst other legatees of Kate Buddicom’s will proved in 1914 was Capt. Harold Echalaz Welch.
Other names: Evesham Lawn (name in use 1881 – 96); Hartford House (name in use 1921 – 44).

Cedar Holme (name in use 1894 – 1934; now 18 Wellington Square). The name Cedar Villa was changed to Cedar Holme when Tudor George Trevor, his wife Cordelia, and their daughter and son-in-law Theodora and Paul Jeremy moved in during 1894. Tudor Trevor had been born in Chennai (Madras), India and after school in York had worked as an accountant for the Paymaster General’s office. In Cheltenham he continued his earlier involvement with Church Missionary and Temperance societies. This was one of several houses which lost the “Villa” tag towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Other names: Georgina Villa (name in use 1839 – 76); Cedar Villa (name in use 1873 – 1894); Maitland Nursing Home (name in use 1936 – 45+).

Cedar Villa (name in use 1873 – 94; now 18 Wellington Square). The name Cedar Villa was introduced to the house formerly known as Georgina Villa when Colonel Ben Hay Martindale and his wife moved in during 1873. It would be attractive to associate the name with a cedar tree in the Square, but although Red Cedars (along with many other plants) had been sold twenty years earlier at the nursery at the south-west corner of Wellington Square, there is no record of a cedar tree standing prominently in the Square. This raises the possibility that Col. Martindale and his wife Mary Elizabeth may have had some family reason for choosing the name. After a career in the Royal Engineers in Gibraltar, Corfu, and elsewhere, Ben Hay Martindale moved to New South Wales in 1857 as Chief Commissioner of Railways, Superintendent of the Electric Telegraph, and then Commissioner for Roads. His wife Mary Elizabeth (née Knocker) was a landscape artist of some note: her Sketchbook of Our Trip to the Blue Mountains, N.S.W., 1860 testifies to her interest in the scenery of New South Wales, where the red and white cedars are prominent aspects of the ecosystem (cedar was a principal export from New South Wales in the early nineteenth century). For a family versed in public construction and artistic representation it is arguable that the name Cedar Villa was influenced strongly by the life of the Martindales in Australia.
Other names: Georgina Villa (name in use 1839 – 76); Cedar Holme (name in use 1894 – 1934); Maitland Nursing Home (name in use 1936 – 45+).

Chaseley Lodge (name in use 1916 to present; West Approach Drive). When Rose Fenton Hannah Armitage moved into her newly built house on West Approach Drive around 1916 she called it Chaseley Lodge. The name Chaseley does not come from the village of Chaceley near Tewkesbury, but from further north. The Armitages were cotton manufacturers in Pendleton, Lancashire, and Rose was brought up in a house called Chaseley Field, on the corner of Eccles Old Road and Chaseley Road, Pendleton. There was another house, called Chaseley Lodge, just further up Eccles Old Road, and her uncle Samuel lived in nearby Chaseley House. So once again an incomer to Cheltenham brought with them a house name which reminded them of their life growing up with their family elsewhere in the country. After her father’s death the house was passed to the local authority as a gift, and in 1899 became the Pendleton High School for Girls.

Clarefield (name in use 1874 – 1934; now 94 Evesham Road). The name Clarefield was introduced by the house’s first resident, Eliza Birchall. Eliza had been born and brought up in Leeds, Yorkshire. Her half-brother John, a wool and cloth mercer, married Clara Jane Brook in York in 1861 but sadly Clara died two years later, in 1863. Eliza then went to live with her brother Dearman in Upton St Leonards in Gloucestershire (1871 census). When Eliza moved into her Cheltenham house three years later, she seems to have chosen a name, Clarefield, which had been occasionally used elsewhere earlier, but which more importantly incorporated a family name commemorating her late sister-in-law Clara Jane and Clara’s daughter Clara Sophia (b. 1862): see The diary of a Victorian squire: extracts from the diaries and letters of Dearman & Emily Birchall (1983). Another acquaintance from Upton St. Leonard’s, Canon Richard Newlove, moved into St. Leonard’s, nearby on Evesham Road.

Claremont (name in use 1907 – 19; now Richmond, West Approach Drive). Colonel George Carleton and his wife Elizabeth (née Hughes) moved into their new house, previously called Bexley and originally 1 Beaufort Villas, about 1907 with their son Guy and their domestic servants. The family came from Dublin and had been out in India, where the Colonel was an officer in the Royal Artillery. There is no apparent motivation for the name Claremont which they gave their new house. It is a conventional house widely found in Britain and Ireland, and although there are Claremonts in the nomenclature of Dublin streets and houses which might be relevant no particular link has been established.
Other names: Bexley (name in use 1887 – 1917); Highbury (name in use 1913 – 15); Mount Sorrell (name in use 1931 – 48).

Clarence Court Hotel: see Ross House (name in use 1840 -1899); Wellesley Court (name in use 1900 – 1950+).

Clarence Lodge (name in use 1850 to present; Clarence Square). When this house was built, it was sold to Mary Carden as 2 Pittville Terrace North. Pittville Terrace North only contained two houses, and during the 1840s the terrace name was abandoned and the two houses (this one and Tyndale) first became associated with North Place and soon with Clarence Square. Clarence Lodge is a fashionable house name which derived its first element from the name of the square to which it now belonged, which in turn borrowed it slightly earlier from the Duke of Clarence (after 1830, King William IV: see Hodsdon, Gazetteer), as had Cheltenham’s Clarence Road.

Clarence Villa (name in use 1843 – 1900; Barnfield, Clarence Square). A fashionable house name taken from the street to which it belonged, Clarence Square: see Clarence Lodge. The name was probably given by the original owner Dr James Sperry. Towards the end of the century the name was changed to Deerhurst.
Other names: Deerhurst (name in use 1897 – 1915+).

Clarendon (name in use 1907 – 38; now 10 Pittville Lawn). This was the name John George Crow and his wife Ann gave to their new Pittville residence in 1907; John was a retired tea-planter who worked for Rothchild’s in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The house had previously been known as 3 Clarendon Villas, and so the name Clarendon was plucked, perhaps rather grandiloquently, from the name of the terrace in which it nestled.

Cleeve House (name in use 1914 to present; now Cleeve House and Homewood, West Approach Drive). The name Cleeve House in Pittville would normally derive directly from any of the surrounding Cleeves (Bishop’s Cleeve, Cleeve Hill, or Cleeve Road, an earlier name for Evesham Road). But in this case the situation is more complicated. The house was known as Dunboyne when retired Hop and Seed Merchant Joseph Whale Buckland moved in during 1914. He had previously been living nearby in Cleevemont, which suggests another factor in the name Cleeve House. But remarkably he had moved to Cleevemont in Cheltenham from Cleeve House in Lower Wick, near Worcester, where he had lived with his family in the 1890s. Both the names Cleeve House in Worcester and Cleevemont in Cheltenham preceded Buckland’s occupancy, so he was not involved in the original introduction of those names. The implication, then, is that when he moved into Dunboyne in Pittville he changed the name to the name of a house he had once lived in near Worcester, but also doubtless under the influence of the existing Pittville resonances for Cleeve.
Other names: Dunboyne (name in use 1891 – 1913).

Cleveland House (also Cleeveland House; name in use 1828 (1846) – 1950+; now 38 Evesham Road). The name Cleveland House appears early in the Pittville records, in 1828. The house was built by William Clifford sometime after 1824, and the name appears to have been given by him. It recalls the fashionable Cleveland House, in Cleveland Row, St James’s Square, originally built in the early seventeenth century, but by the turn of the eighteenth century the London home of the Marquess of Stafford (now Bridgewater House), and the scene of elegant parties and also of the well-known Stafford picture gallery. London’s Cleveland House was so called after the title of Charles II's mistress Barbara Villiers, who was made Duchess of Cleveland (the region and former county in the north east of England) in 1670. But this house name has local connections as well: Pittville’s Cleveland House was built just north of the section of Evesham Road then often known as Cleeve (or Cleve) Road, and predates the projected Cleeveland Parade, running north from Cleveland House up the Evesham Road. There is some confusion over the spelling: early references are to Cleveland House, but a general movement in spelling away from Cleve- towards Cleeve- (in Cleeve Road, Bishop’s Cleeve, etc.) from the mid-nineteenth century led to variability in Cheltenham’s Clevelands and Cleevelands, with the -ee- form tending to predominate.

Clive Lodge (name in use 1939 to present; now Clive Lodge, Wellington Square). In 1939 (John) Edwin Patrick Bateson applied for planning permission to convert outbuildings of Flesk Lodge into living accommodation. When the work was completed, he renamed the new house Clive Lodge, and rented it out to semi-retired Isaac Cohen and his family, who had come south to Cheltenham to escape the threat of bombing raids in Sunderland. Bateson had been in the Army during the First World War, in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and then the Machine Gun Corps. After the war he had gone out to India, living in Calcutta, where he worked as an Assistant for merchants and bankers Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co., of Clive Street (Thacker’s Indian Directory: Calcutta, Commercial, 1931). He returned to Britain in 1932, and after his father died in Cheltenham in 1936 began renovating properties. His newly converted property in Pittville was named Clive Lodge, almost certainly in memory of Robert Clive of India, particularly famous and commemorated in Calcutta for recapturing the city in 1757. The immediate motivation for the name of Clive Lodge was probably the fact that Bateson’s place of work was in Clive Street, Calcutta. Both of the other houses in what was an old nursery-garden site at that corner of Wellington Square were at the time called “lodges” (Flesk Lodge and Wellington Lodge), so the choice of “lodge” was uncomplicated. Surprisingly, there were several other Clive Lodges in the country at the time, notably on the Hendon Way in London, and on the Albury estate in Surrey, both probably also in some way commemorating Clive of India.
Other names: Gothic Cottage (name in use 1851 – 68).

Cornbrash House (name in use 1868 – 9; now Longville, Pittville Circus Road). Also Cornbrash Villa (1868). [Under review.]
Other names: Cotswold Villa (2) (name in use 1870 – 1903); Longville (name in use 1911 to present).

Corelli (name in use 1895 – 1910; now 13 Clarence Square). From 12 October 1895 No 13 Clarence Square was also known as Corelli. It was on that date that Professor of Music and Principal Violinist Edgar George Woodward moved into the house with his family from Gloucester. Woodward was an enthusiast for the music of Arcangelo Corelli (1653 – 1713), a violinist and composer of the Baroque era. In the 1870s he arranged classical concerts in Gloucester, which included pieces by Corelli (and in at least one the pianist was Gustav Holst’s father),  and from this time named the house in Clarence Street, Gloucester, where he taught the study and practice of classical music, Corelli House. He transferred the name to 13 Clarence Square in Cheltenham partly because of his love for Corelli’s music, and partly for the sake of continuity for his teaching business. The name is not connected with the novelist Marie Corelli, who was very popular at the time. Edwin Woodward died in 1907, but the name remained in use at Clarence Square until 1910, when a change of occupant heralded a return to the less colourful No 13.

Corinium (name in use 1907 – 40; now 31 Clarence Square). Art dealer Edward Parker and his wife Emma (née Smith) christened their new house Corinium when they retired to Clarence Square around 1906. They had previously lived in Montpellier Avenue, just up from the Queen’s Hotel. Emma Parker was born in Cirencester, which was probably behind the name Corinium, Latin for “Cirencester”. Edward Parker died in 1926, at the age of 90, at Corinium, and the house did not revert to its number until 1940.

Cornbrash Villa (name in use 1860; now 10 Pittville Crescent). The name occurs in the conveyance of 1860 between builder William Smith and purchaser Stephen Demainbray; the previous year, both this and the neighbouring plot (now No 11) were intended, according to Smith's mortgage, for houses to be known as Cornbrash Villas. Cornbrash was a term likely to be familiar to builders: it is a geological word for the coarse, calcareous substance “which forms the upper division of the Lower Oolite in various parts of England” (OED), and describes one of the substrates found in parts of Gloucestershire stretching down to the Thames Valley. The house name clearly did not prove popular with the new owner, and it was changed to Lorraine Villa before he moved in. Compare Marle Hill and Marle Hill House.
Other names: Lorraine Villa (name in use 1860 – 1903).

Cotswold Grange (name in use 1848 – 1950+; now Cotswold Grange Hotel, Pittville Circus Road). Also Cotteswold Grange (1848 – 83). According to the Cheltenham Annuaire, the first occupant of Cotswold Grange was John Waddingham JP, who made his money as a cloth merchant in Leeds and became Deputy Director of the Leeds and Bradford Railway (and was later High Sheriff of Gloucestershire). In 1845 he sold the leasehold of his property, Burley Wood House outside Leeds, and in 1848 moved with his family into Cotswold Grange in Pittville Circus Road. The property was set in extensive grounds, attracting the description “Grange” rather than “House”. At the same time as his move to Pittville, Waddingham was negotiating the purchase of an even grander, and older, property, Guiting Grange (demolished c1972), near Winchcombe. He bought Guiting Grange in 1849, but the name probably influenced his choice of Cotswold Grange a year earlier. The Pittville property was the first of several houses to employ Cotswold in its name: an advertisement for the house in the Gloucestershire Echo of 1910 remarked on its “extensive views of the Cotswold Hills”. See also Malvern Hill Villa.

Cotswold Lodge (name in use 1859 to present; Pittville Circus Road). Cotswold Lodge had originally been named Cotswold Villa. But after only two years new resident George Law and his family moved in from Kenilworth House in Pittville Lawn and upgraded the name to Cotswold Lodge. Law was a London solicitor, and at the time of his death in 1871 he was the second oldest (and hence second most senior) registered London solicitor.
Other names: Cotswold Villa (1) (name in use 1857 – 60).

Cotswold Villa (1) (name in use 1857 – 60; now Cotswold Lodge, Pittville Circus Road). The first Cotswold Villa was advertised for sale or let in the Cheltenham Looker-On in late 1857, with its “southern aspect” and commanding “extensive and interesting views”. Miss Young moved in, from Park Place, Cheltenham in late 1858; she was followed in the next year by William Jones, magistrate, and his family, later of Segrave House and Anlaby House. The conventional, topographical name lasted only until 1859 (see Cotswold Lodge). From the 1840s Cheltenham had boasted Cotswold (also Cotteswold) Villas, at the southern end of Painswick Road.
Other names: Cotswold Lodge (name in use 1859 to present).

Cotswold Villa (2) (name in use 1870 – 1903; now Longville, Pittville Circus Road). After a gap of ten years the name Cotswold Villa was reintroduced in 1870 on the south side of Pittville Circus Road, for the house previously known as Combrash House (or Villa). The change of name coincided with the arrival at the house of accountant and Secretary to Cheltenham College William Levett Bain and his family, who lived there throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. Soon after the death of W. L. Bain’s widow, Elizabeth, in 1910, the house name was changed again, to Longville.
Other names: Cornbrash House (name in use 1868 – 9); Longville (name in use 1911 to present).

Cranley Lodge (name in use 1864 – 1950+; Cranley, Wellington Square). Also Cranley (1891 to present). The house had previously been called The Aviary, but a year or so after Col. Arthur Walton Onslow took up residency with his family in 1862 he changed the name to Cranley Lodge, alluding to the family name Cranley, acquired by the Onslows almost a century earlier. Col. Onslow himself (1814 – 95) was the youngest child of Sir Thomas Onslow, 2^nd Baronet Onslow, of Althair, Lancashire (1784 – 1853). Arthur and his father were members of the larger Onslow family, Earls of Onslow, of whom Thomas Onslow had been created Baron Cranley of Imber Court in the County of Surrey in 1776, and raised to Viscount Cranley of Cranley in the County of Surrey in 1801. Col. Onslow’s eldest brother was Richard Cranley Onslow, so the family had already used the name to signal their connection with the senior branch.
Other names: The Aviary (name in use 1837 – 63).

Cyntaf House (1833 – 85; now 88 Portland Street). Cartref (= “home”) is probably the most common Welsh word used in house names in Britain. Cyntaf (= “first”) is unusual as the name of a house. Cyntaf House was a corner property designed by Joseph Pitt’s Pittville architect Robert Stokes, and was an early build: perhaps Cyntaf means that it was the first house Stokes designed for the Pittville estate. Alternatively, it may have been so named as the first house (along with Stokes-designed Maisonette at 55 Portland Street opposite) which visitors to Pittville from central Cheltenham would have encountered on their way to the Pump Room along Portland Street. Early owners and residents do not seem to have particular associations with Wales.
Other names: Atherstone Lawn (1886 – 1907), Deerhurst (1915 to present).

Damery (name in use 1925 – 7; now 3 Albert Road). The house name was introduced by Edmund Warren Lewis Ryves, during his occupation of the house (1922-31). It occurs only occasionally, and it seems that Ryves soon dropped it in favour of the house number. The name Damery (ultimately D’Amory) harks back to Damery (also Damory) Court, in Blandford, Dorset, where the Ryves (also Rivers, Reeves) family lived from the late sixteenth until the early eighteenth centuries. The name is still used as a street name, and in other contexts, in Blandford. The name Damery, Stroud, is not directly related. Edmund Ryves’s father, William John Francis Ryves, used a similar ancestral memory in naming Elton Villa in Pittville Crescent Road. Although Ryves’s house was known in the late 1920s and early 1930s as 2 Albert Road, with the rationalised re-numbering of the road in the late 1930s it became 3 Albert Road.
Other names: Glengariff (1909 – 23).

Darfield (name in use 1913 – 16; 16 Evesham Road). When Captain Francis (“Frank”) Robert Paulet moved back to Cheltenham with his wife in 1912, he lived at 8 Pittville Parade (now 16 Evesham Road). By the following year, the house had been renamed Darfield. Darfield was the name of the village near Barnsley where his mother, who came from Yorkshire, had taken the family immediately after the death of her husband, Swiss-born Liverpool merchant Marc Etienne Paulet, in 1850; the 1851 census records them at the Rectory, Darfield (not to be confused with the Vicarage nearby, where the Vicar lived with his family). By the time of the 1861 census the family had moved on to Ilkley, and Francis was in the Crimea. The Pittville house name briefly commemorated his mother’s family, and the Yorkshire village where he had lived for a while as a child.

Daylesford (name in use 1919 to present; now Daylesford, Wellington Square). Daylesford was known as Westville before the arrival in Pittville of widow Caroline Handy and her three daughters in 1919, from Hampen, on the Stow road out of Andoversford. The name Daylesford derives from the village of that name in northern Gloucestershire, just below the border with Oxfordshire, which was best known at the time as the home of Warren Hastings, former Governor-General of India. Hastings acquired Daylesford House in 1788, and died there in 1818. Caroline Handy gave her new house the name Daylesford in commemoration of her family’s origins. She was born Caroline Garne, in Eastington, Northleach, and her father George Garne, a noted local stockbreeder, especially of shorthorn cattle, farmed at Churchill Heath, Oxfordshire, next-door to Daylesford (Warren Hastings had been born in Churchill). Before this, Garne’s family had mostly farmed in Sherborne and Aldsworth, east and south of Cheltenham. His grandfather William Garne married Bridget Hastings, and when he died in 1873 Jackson’s Oxford Journal ran a story which said that “on his mother’s side [he] claimed kinship with the illustrious Warren Hastings” of Daylesford House. Bridget Hastings’s father was Henry Hastings, who lived in Shipton, near Andoversford, and it is not clear how he was related to the Daylesford Hastings family (if at all). But it was the family memory of the association with the village of Daylesford that caused Caroline Handy to bring the name to Pittville in 1919.
Other names: Westville (name in use 1877 – 1903).

Deanwood House (name in use 1891 – 1938; now Homespring House, Pittville Circus Road). Also Dean Wood House (1891 – 1911+) and later Deanwood (1914 – 1986+). Originally Vallombrosa, the house name was changed when General Alexander Carnegy (Bombay Army, retired) brought his new wife Helen and their joint family to Pittville in 1891. The new name does not appear to be associated with the history of either family, and so its origin is currently uncertain. It is possible that it was influenced by the previous name Vallombrosa (“shady vale/valley”), the wooded region of Tuscany around the Vallombrosa abbey: dean (or dene) is an old word for “valley” (see also Hodsdon, Gazetteer).
Other names: Vallombrosa (name in use 1848 – 90).

Deerhurst (1) (name in use 1897 – 1915+; Barnfield, Clarence Square). Deerhurst is the name of a village and parish (including the hamlet of Deerhurst Walton) north of Gloucester, on the east bank of the Severn near Tewkesbury. Caroline Newman moved to Pittville with her family, originally from Winchcombe, around 1895; her husband Thomas Newman, surgeon and High Bailiff of Winchcombe, had died in 1882. When she moved in, the house was called Clarence Villa, and she changed it to Deerhurst in or before 1897, in memory of the parish of Deerhurst where her husband’s father farmed, and where he had been brought up. The family lived there until 1915 (letting it out for some of this time), when they transferred the name to another house in Pittville (88 Portland Street). See also Ravenhurst.
Other names: Clarence Villa (name in use 1843 – 1900).

Deerhurst (2) (name is use 1915 to present; Deerhurst, 88 Portland Street). Caroline Newman lived with her family from around 1897 in the house in Clarence Square that they had named Deerhurst, in memory for her late husband William Newman. On 3 July 1915 an unusual notice appeared in the “Removals” section of the Cheltenham Looker-On: “Newman, Mrs. and Miss, Deerhurst, Clarence Square, to Deerhurst, Portland Street”. The implication is that they moved from their old house, called Deerhurst, to another one in the same area (88 Portland Street), which they had renamed Deerhurst, retaining the memorial to her late husband Thomas, who had been brought up in Deerhurst in Gloucestershire. Caroline Newman lived in the house until her death in 1925, so after which the family moved on. See Deerhurst (1).

Devonshire House: see Halsey House (name in use 1873 – 1950+); Primrose Lawn (name in use 1833 – 87).

Donore (name in use 1882 – 96; now St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). The house had proved difficult to sell or let after its chequered history (see St Anne’s and the Cheltenham Ghost) and had reverted from Garden Reach to Pittville Hall in 1881. But in the following year a new resident was found, and Captain Frederic William Despard, his wife Harriet, and their children moved in during April from Lansdown Place. They immediately changed the name of the house once again, this time to Donore. Although baptised in Gillingham, Kent in 1830, Frederic Despard was born in Ireland, the son of Henry and Anne Despard. The family’s ancestral home for a hundred and fifty years had been Donore House, in the township of Donore, County Laois (then Queen’s County), in the centre of Ireland just off the main Dublin-Limerick road. Donore House had been built by William Despard’s great-grandfather’s uncle Richard Despard (1682 – 1740) and although it was inhabited into the twentieth century by the descendants of Richard’s son George, it was clearly regarded as the family seat by other branches of the extended family.
Other names: Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35).

Dorset House (name in use 1925 – 50+; now Dorset Villa, 83 Pittville Lawn). Originally Dorset Villa, the house had spent the First World War under the name of Axholme, However, with the arrival of Captain Marmaduke Langdale and his wife in 1919, from nearby Anlaby, on the Evesham Road, it reverted partially to its old name, becoming Dorset House. There was a movement away from Villa as a name for Pittville’s large, grand houses in the entry twentieth century, in favour of House, or sometimes Lodge. In the case of Dorset House, it moved with a new trend for Villa later in the century, becoming once again Dorset Villa.
Other names: Dorset Villa (name in use 1843 to present), Axholme (name in use 1911 – 24).

Dorset Villa (name in use 1843 to present; Dorset Villa, 83 Pittville Lawn). The name was perhaps conferred by the first owner, the Honourable Andrew Ramsay, fifth son of the 8^th Earl of Dalhousie, who bought the house in 1842 and moved there from Banchory Lodge (later Evesham House), Wellington Road. No association has so far been established between Ramsay’s family or his life (much of which was spent in the employ of the Bengal Civil Service) and Dorsetshire. However, in the early 1840s fashionable Dorset Villas are also recorded by the Thames at Fulham and in another spa town, Tunbridge Wells.
Other names: Axholme (name in use 1911 – 24), Dorset House (name in use 1925 – 50+).

Dover House (name in use 1874 – 96; now Park House, Wellington Square). Dover House first appears as the name for the house previously referred to as 2 Wellington Square East on the arrival of recently widowed retired solicitor Richard Henry Greatheed Wilson and his daughter Harriet in 1874. The motivation for the name is uncertain. Richard Wilson himself was born in India, where his father served with the East India Company’s Madras Army, and both he and his first wife Sarah Hewett lived in the north of England and in the midlands. The best-known Dover House was in Whitehall, the home of the Baron Dover and from 1885 the office of the Advocate General for Scotland, but no association has yet been established between Richard Wilson’s family and Dover or any building incorporating the word. After the death of Richard Wilson’s widow Anne Eliza (née Disney) in 1896, the name of the house was changed again to Inver.
Other names: Inver (name in use 1897 – 1910), Beckaford House (name in use 1913 – 90+).

Drumholm (name in use 1889-1946+; now 15 Pittville Lawn). Irish-born Surgeon-General John Alexander William Thompson introduced the house name Drumholm (sometimes Drumholme) when he took up residency here with his wife and family after a successful career in the Army Medical staff in India and elsewhere. The inspiration for the name was Thompson’s home town: he was born around 1822 in Ballintra, County Donegal. Drumholm is an alternative name for Ballintra.

Drummond House (name in use 1901 to present; Drummond House, 6 Pittville Crescent). When the Aitkens arrived at Drummond House in 1897, the house was still called 6 Pittville Crescent. They retained the number until 1901, when they changed the name to Drummond House. The family consisted of Agnes Aitken, widow of William Aitken M.D., deputy surgeon-general in the service of the East India Company (Madras Army), and her two children Alice and William, both born in India around thirty years earlier. The choice of Drummond is not yet satisfactorily explained. Both William and his wife Agnes came from Edinburgh (Agnes lived centrally in Minto Street and William had joined the EICS at the Edinburgh Depot in 1841). As a trained surgeon, William is likely to have been familiar with the Royal Infirmary on Drummond Street, and the Old Surgeons Hall and the Drummond Library, now part of the University of Edinburgh campus, nearby. Perhaps this was a factor in the naming of Drummond House. See a similar explanation at Ross House.
Other names: Stanley Villa (name in use 1878 – 82).

Dunboyne (name in use 1891 – 1913; now Cleeve House and Homewood, West Approach Drive). Major-General Thomas de Courcy Hamilton VC, a celebrated Crimean War veteran, moved into 3 Beaufort Villas with his large household in 1875. It was not until 1890, the year in which his son Ernest died aged 21, that he changed the name of the house to Dunboyne. Dunboyne is a village in County Meath in Ireland, and although Thomas Hamilton himself was born in Scotland, his father had been born on the Hamilton’s Ballymacoll estate at Dunboyne, and the family had long-standing associations with the place.
Other names: Cleeve House (name in use 1914 to present).

East Hayes (name in use 1844 – 1950+; now Lansdown House, Pittville Circus Road). This house was built “under the superintendence of [Pittville builder Mr. Edward Cope] ... for the Rev. John Browne, of Riverstown, Co. Cork”, and since the mid 1820s of Trinity Church, Pittville. In 1842 his congregation wished to show their respect for their minister, and to recompense him for contributing personally towards annual expenses for the choir and organ of the church. They raised over £1,500 in a matter of weeks, “for the purpose of enabling Mr. Browne to exchange his present house [2 (now 31) Pittville Lawn, which he owned] for a more commodious one” (Cheltenham Looker-On, 5 March 1842). The reason for the choice of East Hayes as the house name, though likely to be Browne’s, is uncertain. Perhaps it relates to the Upper and Lower East Hayes area of Bath, on the main approach to the city from the east, but this is not supported by evidence (Hodsdon, Gazetteer). Hayes Road off Pittville Circus Road is much later, and was named after the house in the 1950s.

Eastholme (1870 to present day; Wellington Square). Dublin QC George Bennett retired to Sodylt Hall, Shropshire around 1849, dying there seven years later, aged 78. His widow Elizabeth and her daughters Eleanor and Mary then moved down to 50 Clarence Square, Cheltenham and then to Percy House, Wellington Square. They then engaged an architect to design a new house for them at the north-eastern edge of Wellington Square. The architect was York-born John Middleton, by then an established Cheltenham architect. Shortly before designing Eastholme he designed and built his own home, Westholme (Bayshill, now on Overton Road), where he moved in December 1868. It is likely that the name Eastholme, where the Bennetts moved in 1870, is named after the architect Middleton’s own home, Westholme.

Edenham (name in use 1914 – 50+; now Wellington House, Wellington Square). Edenham had been known as 2 Wellesley Villas until the arrival of Miss Isabel Dora Sharp in 1914. Just prior to introducing the name Edenham to her Pittville house, she had applied the same name to the house she occupied from at least 1907 in Hewlett Road. Edenham is the name of a village near Bourne in Lincolnshire, and Miss Sharp’s father had been Vicar of Edenham when she was growing up there; she was herself born just down the road in Bourne. Yet again, the scene of earlier happy memories was used as a house name in Pittville.

Edenholme (name in use 1892 – 1950+; now 106 Evesham Road). Edenholme had been called Iseultdene before the arrival of the Rev. Richard William Ferguson (b. 1828, Carlisle) and his wife Ellen in 1892. The couple moved from Balgowan House (now Fairhavens Court), Pittville Circus Road, though Richard Ferguson had previously been Vicar of Llandogo in Monmouthshire. Edenholme sounds a perfect house name for a retired clergyman, recalling the biblical Eden and his new home. However, the strongest associations are with Ferguson’s native city of Carlisle. Carlisle in Cumbria is built on the confluence of three rivers, the Eden, the Caldew, and the Petteril; holme (an island, or area of low-lying ground near a river) is a predominant place-name element around the Eden and elsewhere in Carlisle. The Ferguson family business was cotton-spinning, and the family mill on the Caldew was called the Holme Head Works. The Fergusons intermarried with the Dixons, who had built their palatial residence, Holme Eden, on the Eden in 1837 (referred to inadvertently as Edenholme in Walter White’s Northumberland, and the Border (1859)). Other similar names, especially along the flood-plain leading east out of Carlisle, include Willow Holme, Stony Holme, Robson Holme, and Holme House. The elements Eden and Holme would have been evocative to Richard Ferguson of his early life in Carlisle. Perhaps the Rev. Richard Ferguson had also read William Arnold’s short story “The Curate of Edenholm”, published in Fraser’s Magazine in October 1857, telling the gloomy tale of Francis, son of the Rev. Edward Rawden and his wife Ellen in the fictional Edenholm, Cumberland, published just a year after William’s own marriage to Ellen Smelt.
Other names: Iseultdene (name in use 1887 – 91).

Edgbaston House (name in use 1873-1915; now Gate House, East Approach Drive). Edgbaston is the name of an affluent suburb in south-west Birmingham, attractive to wealthy Victorians as the controlling Gough-Calthorpe family banned the development of industry and warehousing in the area. The name Edgbaston House was employed by the estate agent Engells Sanders & Co when the property was first advertised in 1873 (Cheltenham Looker-On, 20 September). It is not possible to be more specific about the motivation for the house name, though if the house was acquired by Lucy Whateley, widow of the respected Birmingham solicitor John Welchman Whateley, of Edgbaston Hall, Birmingham, then perhaps she named it in memory of her husband; she had moved into Wyddrington House in Pittville Lawn by 1875.
Other names: Gate House (name in use 1922 to present).

Edgbaston House Stables (name in use 1885 – 1911; site at 24 Walnut Close). In the 1881 census the building, at the end of the piece of land owned by Edgbaston House, was referred to as the “Stables at Edgbaston House”, home to coachman James Day and his family. The 1911 census shows chauffeur Ernest Beckett there, with his wife and three daughters. In the following year the occupant of Edgbaston House itself, Richard Bagnall Oakeley, registered his motor car, a green 16/20 horsepower Wolseley, which he apparently kept until 1916. Occupation of these “stable” buildings is poorly recorded in the annual directories and registers, but by 1924 this house was known as Gate House Stables, and later as Gate House Cottage. This followed a regular development of occupied outbuildings or annexes from “stable” to “cottage” in Pittville in the early years of the twentieth century; Mews was also used, but slightly less frequently.
Other names: Gate House Stables (name in use 1924 – 48+), Gate House Cottage (name in use 1930 – 47+).

Eglinton (name in use 1897 – 1934; now East Eglinton/West House, Pittville Circus). In 1891 Frederick William Frampton (born in Cheltenham), his wife Anne, three children, and six servants lived at Aban Court South, Malvern Place, Cheltenham. In 1897 they moved into Eglinton (previously St Idloes) on Pittville Circus. Although they changed the name of the house to Eglinton, the name was not new to them. When they had lived in Torquay in the 1880s they had lived at a house called Eglinton on Vansittart Road, in the Torr area of the city. The Torquay house had been called Eglinton since the 1860s, so they had simply taken over an existing name and then brought it to Cheltenham. The name Eglinton almost exclusively derives from the name of the Earls of Eglinton, the ancestral seat at Eglinton Castle, Kilwinning, North Ayrshire, or the place from which these are ultimately named. An infant son died while the Framptons were living at Eglinton in Torquay, and in his memory they presented All Saints’ Church in Torr with a small window. The Cheltenham name commemorated their life fifteen years earlier in Torquay. Mrs Frampton left the house, and Cheltenham in 1925, five years after the death of her husband. By the late 1930s it had been divided into two residences, East Eglinton and Eglinton West (now West House), and a small East Wing added.
Other names: Rosehaugh Villa (name in use 1844 – 85); St Idloes (name in use 1887 – 96); see also Eglinton East (name in use 1937 to present), Eglinton West (name in use 1938 – 50+).

Eglinton East (name in use 1937 to present; Eglinton East, Pittville Circus). Also East Eglinton  (1935 to present). The house name was created when Eglinton was divided into two residences in 1935, by the builders Billings, who applied to the borough to make “Alterations” to the property in that year. Strictly speaking, it might have been called Eglinton North, but “East” may have been chosen to describe the right-hand side of the front elevation of the original building, as on a map. The first occupants were retired engineer Alexander John Rickie, and his wife Edith. The other side of the new semi-detached property was called Eglinton West or West Eglinton.
Other names: Eglinton (name in use 1897 – 1934); Rosehaugh Villa (name in use 1844 – 85); St Idloes (name in use 1887 – 96).

Eglinton West (name in use 1938 – 50+; now West Wouse, Pittville Circus). Also West Eglinton  (1945). The house name was created when Eglinton was divided into two residences in 1935, by the builders Billings, who applied to the borough to make “Alterations” to the property in that year. Strictly speaking, it might have been called Eglinton South, but “West” may have been chosen to describe the left-hand side of the front elevation of the original building, as on a map. The first occupants were the elderly Misses Tuke, Marian and Jeanie, who had lived in Pittville since 1930. The other side of the new semi-detached property was called Eglinton East or East Eglinton.

Ellenborough House: see Farnah (name in use 1911 – 15), Pittville Mansion (name in use 1833 – 1906), White House (name in use 1914 – 46).

Ellerslie (1876 to present; Ellerslie, 108 Albert Road). Ellerslie was becoming a fashionable house name when William Henry Bagnall and his second wife moved into the large house around 1876. The name had been popularised particularly by stories of William Wallace, such as the medieval Wallace; or the life and acts of Sir William Wallace, of Ellerslie, by “Blind Hary”, and John Finlay’s Wallace; or, The Vale of Ellerslie (1802): Wallace was said to have been born in Ellerslie (Ayrshire) or perhaps Elderslie (Renfrewshire) in Scotland. The Bagnalls did not introduce the name without prompting. Harriet Welchman, widow of Major-General Welchman, a distant cousin of William Bagnall’s first wife Harriet, lived in Leamington Spa and had called her house Ellerslie from at least 1872. Once the name was readily available to the family, it seems that William’s relation Benjamin Bagnall re-used it a few years later for his house in Eaton Gardens, Hove.

Ellingham House (name in use 1841 to present; Ellingham House, 79 Pittville Lawn). The first owner of the house, in 1841, was Susan Dawson née March Phillipps, widow of Edward Dawson of Leicestershire. The house is named after the village of Ellingham in Hampshire, where the March Phillipps (and the related Lisle family) had property interests: the village remained in Lisle family ownership until 1818, and the house name commemorates this family relationship. Susan Dawson’s brother, Whig MP Charles March Phillipps, lived in Ellingham House after her death in 1853, and their sisters Harriet and Frances lived at Lisle Villa, Clarence Square, Pittville. March Phillippses are found in both houses for several years to come.

Elton Villa (name in use 1861 – 1929; now 11 Pittville Crescent). Sarah Ryves moved into the newly built Elton Villa with her family in 1861 from Rosehaugh Villa (now East Eglinton) on Pittville Circus, a year after her husband’s death. William Harding Ryves (1797 – 1860) had been brought up at his ancestral home, Ryves Castle, Knocklong, in County Limerick. He was the last of his line to live there, having moved to Brighton earlier in the century. His widow Sarah named her new house Elton Villa in memory of her husband’s old family home and in particular of the village and townland of Elton, next door to Ryves Castle. An aunt, Mabella Ryves, had married Standish Grady of Elton House, and William must have remembered the place with affection.

Essex Lodge (name in use 1833 – 1903, when demolished). Essex Lodge was the name given to a small building erected in the late 1820s on the Pittville “pleasure grounds” as a subsidiary spa (it was also known as the “Little Spa”), where the public could take the waters. It stood at the corner of Central Cross Drive and Pittville Lawn, just to the east of the current café building, and census records show that it was occupied as living accommodation by families in both 1851 and 1891. The name derives from the Earls of Essex, who were historically substantial landowners in Cheltenham, and from whom Joseph Pitt acquired a considerable amount of property in and around the area which became the Pittville Estate (see also Capel Court).

Evesham House (name in use 1841 to present; now Evesham House, 21 Wellington Road/Little Evesham House, Wellington Road). Major-General Sir John Jones (Baronet) and his family moved into Evesham House in 1842, having bought it from the Hon. Andrew Ramsay the previous year, when the property was called Banchory Lodge. Evesham House stands on Wellington Road at the corner of the Evesham Road; the new name was more approachably distinctive than the old one, and should not be confused with older Evesham Lodge, just north of Windsor Terrace on the Prestbury Road. Sir John Jones was another old soldier who retired to Pittville. He was a Royal Engineer, commended by Wellington for his management of siege operations during the Peninsula campaign. He died in 1843, and was succeeded in title and at the house by his son Lawrence.
Other names: Banchory Lodge (name in use 1837 – 41); see also Little Evesham House (name in use 1935 to present).

Evesham House Cottage (name in use 1934 – 45+; site of Evesham House Cottage, 1 Evesham Road). Formally Evesham Road Stables, the stable building attached to Evesham House, occupied since around 1906, this was renamed – in keeping with convention in the early twentieth century, to Evesham Road Cottage. The occupants who introduced the change were labourer Arthur Charles Castle and his wife Anne, who moved into the building around 1934 with their two children, from Columbia Street in Fairview.
Other names: Blenheim House Stables (name in use 1891 – 1929); Evesham House Stables (name in use 1906 – 29).

Evesham House Stables (name in use 1906 – 29; site of Evesham House Cottage, 1 Evesham Road). The stable building at Evesham House was occupied from at least 1906 under this name; “Stables” was at the time the usual term for a secondary occupied outbuilding on a larger site. By the mid 1930s the name had been “modernised” to Evesham House Cottage.
Other names: Blenheim House Stables (name in use 1891 – 1929); Evesham House Cottage (name in use 1934 – 45+).

Evesham Lawn (name in use 1881 – 96; now 102 Evesham Road). The house name is first seen in the 1881 national census, rather than in original sale advertisements for the new property, overlooking Pittville lawns on the Evesham Road. The first resident was Thomas Brown, a 77-year-old JP for Monmouthshire and Breconshire, who moved in with his wife in 1881. He died at the house in November 1884, and the name was retained until 1897, when it changed to Casa Echalez.
Other names: Casa Echalaz (name in use 1897 – 1914); Hartford House (name in use 1921 – 44).

Fairhavens Court: see Balgowan House (name in use 1859 – 1902); Balgowan Lodge (name in use 1859 – 60); Northerwood (name in use 1903 – 1946+).

Farnah (name in use 1911 – 15; now Ellenborough House, Clarence Road). Also Farnagh. Farnah seems to be the primary spelling, but both occur in the records. The Pococks moved out of what was called Pittville Mansion in 1901, and the house was put up for auction. At present there are no records for the house’s name until 1911, when surgeon Francis John Goringe Mason moved his practice there from Livorno Lodge in St Margaret’s Road. Farnah might be interpreted as a name commemorating Farnah Hall, home of Lord Scarsdale, in Duffield, Derbyshire, or perhaps the nearby village of Farnah Green near Belper, but neither seem to be associated with the Masons. Perhaps it was conferred by another, unrecorded resident. Cheltenham had another Farnah, in Berkeley Street, and also a Farnah Cottage, but later, in the 1920s; these may be unconnected. The variant Farnagh is occasionally found in Ireland as a house name; it would be identifiable as an Irish Gaelic word meaning “a place abounding in alder trees”. But perhaps the spelling is just a rationalisation for an unusual word. Dr Mason’s wife Mary was born in Cork, but to an English Army family stationed in Ireland. The motivation for the name Farnah is currently uncertain. Once the Masons left the house, it was given a new name, The White House.
Other names: Pittville Mansion (name in use 1873 – 1950+); White House (name in use 1914 – 46).

Fenwick Lodge (name in use 1941 – 50+; Brompton House, East Approach Drive). After Altidore Villa became Horstead House, it underwent one more change of name before 1950. When Alan George Fenwick moved in with his new wife in 1941 he introduced his own family name as the house name: Fenwick Lodge. Another house which used this naming technique, through slightly earlier, was Handley Cross. Fenwick Lodge was the Fenwicks’ Cheltenham base; their main residence remained at Wendover, Buckinghamshire. However, in 1939 Alan Fenwick had inherited Thirlestaine House from his uncle Thomas Fitzroy Phillipps Fenwick, and with it the collection of Old Masters and manuscripts originally collected by their ancestor Sir Thomas Phillipps. The Fenwicks moved into Thirlestaine House in the mid 1945s, but only to prepare it for sale, to Cheltenham College, in 1947 and to store much of the art collection for major sales into the 1950s. Fenwick Lodge became a Nursing Home until at least 1994, after which its name was changed again, to Brompton House.
Other names: Altidore Villa (name in use 1866 – 1925); Horstead House (name in use 1924 – 41).

Fenwick Lodge Cottage (name in use 1943 – 50+; now Beaver House and Southfield, Marston Road). When the name of Horstead House was changed to Fenwick Lodge in 1941 it was not likely to be long before Horstead House Cottage changed its name too. Records show that Horstead House Cottage was known as Fenwick Lodge Cottage from at least 1943. The occupant then was nightwatchman James Walter Critchley.
Other names: Altidore Stables (name in use 1911 – 23); Horstead House Cottage (name in use 1926 – 41).

Fern Lawn (name in use 1875 – 1913; now Scoriton, 16 Pittville Crescent). Fern Lawn was the name given to the house by its first residents, Edward Pilgrim and his wife Emma, when they moved in during 1875. The name alludes to Edward Pilgrim’s passion for horticulture (see below). People knew that Edward Pilgrim was fortunate. His father was a sawyer, and he himself worked for many years as a servant and valet to Charles Hatt Velley, the wealthy occupant of 5 Segrave Place (now 9 Pittville Lawn). Emma had been a cook in the Velley establishment. When Charles Velley grew older, he decided to move to Bath, and is said to have offered his faithful servant Edward Pilgrim the substantial sum of £10,000 as a gift of gratitude even if he left his service, with the promise of more if Pilgrim accompanied Velley to Bath and continued to serve him (which he and Emma did) (see Pilgrim’s long obituary notice in the Cheltenham Mercury, Saturday 20 October 1883). Charles Velley died in 1873, quite soon after moving to Bath. Edward Pilgrim was his sole executor and a substantial beneficiary of Velley’s will (Velley’s estate was around £70,000). With some of his remarkable inheritance, Edward and his wife moved back to Cheltenham, and purchased Fern Lawn in Pittville Crescent. As a horticulturist Edward Pilgrim had few rivals in Cheltenham. Soon after moving into Fern Lawn he erected a grand glass-house in the gardens. Although ferns may sound unexciting to non-gardeners, they formed part of the new wave of exotic and ornamental plants of which Pilgrim was enamoured. They were minutely examined in books such as Joseph Lowe’s multi-volume Ferns: British and Exotic (1856-60).  Pilgrim’s horticultural interests were widespread, and he competed and exhibited frequently and successfully across the region. The Cheltenham Mercury refers to “His magnificent collection of foliage plants [which] … were the talk of the whole county”. When his property came to be sold in 1910, the Gloucestershire Echo waxed lyrical about Fern Lawn, “a residence and pleasure grounds of exceptional beauty, including ornamental water”. When Edward Pilgrim died, he left over £65,000, almost as much as Velley’s original estate, but is commended by the Mercury for using the money wisely to bring happiness to so many people through his passion for beautiful and ornamental plants.
Other names: Scoriton (name in use 1911 to present).

Flat Roofs (name in use 1935 – 45+; now 10 Albert Road). One half of a semi-detached house first occupied in 1935. The style of the roof is flat, borrowing an element of “Moderne” design popular in the 1930s. When Gladys Margaret Gulland moved in during 1935 she named the house after the striking roof profile, disguised slightly at the front behind a classical-style pediment. Gladys Gulland had lived for many years in Pittville; she was the daughter of Surgeon-General Alexander Dudgeon Gulland, and had previously lived in Malvern Hill House, on East Approach Drive, and at Sligo House on Wellington Road. When she left the house, her successors, the Snowdens, retained the whimsical name, though the house later reverted to being known simply as 10 Albert Road.

Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939; now Old Lodge, Wellington Square). When fishmonger Daniel Olive and his family moved in during 1857, this house was called Victoria Cottage. The Olives soon changed the name to Wellington Cottage. But in 1868 the Olives changed the name again, to Flesk Lodge. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the name Flesk derives from the name of the River Flesk (or the Brown Flesk) in Co. Kerry in the west of Ireland, and from houses, such as Flesk Lodge and Flesk Cottage (and Flesk or Glenflesk Castle) known and occupied in the region of the river at the time. Although there is as yet no evidence associating the Olives with the river, it is significant that the Flesk is known as a salmon river. As a family of fishmongers in Cheltenham and Gloucester over three generations, the Olives were extensively associated with salmon. In 1843 the Bristol Mercury of 3 June noted that a huge male salmon was on display at the shop of Mr. Olive, fishmonger in the Colonnade, Cheltenham, caught at Beachley, on the Severn near Gloucester. In 1844 Daniel’s brother William, a fishmonger in Gloucester, advertised in Berrow’s Worcester Journal (30 May, etc.) that he could supply fresh salmon by railway to Worcester and surrounding areas. On 9 May Daniel Olive had a letter published in The Times in which he defended himself stoutly against a charge of selling immature salmon. On 24 June 1875 the Western Mail reported that Daniel Olive was called for the defence to counter an accusation of illegally selling breeding salmon out of season. In 1880 the Cheltenham Mercury of 10 January noted that Daniel Olive was charged with selling “unseasonable salmon” caught in Carmarthenshire and transported by railway through Cardiganshire (where the Olives had once lived). It seems likely that the Olives knew about the River Flesk first-hand.
Other names: Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43); Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7); Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67); Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881); Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present).

Garden House (name in use 1933 to present; Garden House, West Drive). The Garden House was built on a large plot along the side of West Drive in the early 1930s for Cheltenham Alderman Clara Winterbotham, of the long-established Pittville Winterbotham family. The name does not signify that the house was built in the garden of a larger house, as was the case with many of the stable and mews cottages in Pittville, but rather because it was a house with a resplendent garden, established and tended in the 1930s and later by Clara Winterbotham and her companion Nurse Marie Eugenie de Nieures. Alderman Winterbotham hosted substantial garden parties in the garden during the 1940s when she was Mayor of Cheltenham.

Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79; now St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). Henry Swinhoe, the first owner of Garden Reach in Pittville Circus Road, was born in Calcutta (now Kolkota) in the mid 1820s. His parents were Thomas Bruce Swinhoe (sometime Solicitor to the East India Company in Calcutta) and his wife Jane. By the 1840s Thomas Swinhoe and his family lived in a suburb known as Garden Reach in the south-west of Calcutta near the Hooghly River, and Henry himself lived there with his wife and young family into the 1850s, when they emigrated to England around 1854. In 1861 Henry and his family lived in Sidmouth, in Devon, and by 1865 they had moved up to take possession of their new house in Pittville. Their stay in Pittville was not happy (see St Anne's and the Cheltenham Ghost for further information), though the house was originally named to remind the family of their happy memories of life in India. After Henry Swinhoe’s death in 1876 the house proved hard to sell or let, and after four apparently vacant years by 1880 it had been renamed Pittville Hall in the hope of giving it a new start.
Other names: Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35).

Gate House (name in use 1922 to present; Gate House, East Approach Drive). Edward Joseph Gibbons changed the name of Edgbaston House to Gate House when they moved in during 1922. The house was not built as a gate house, but is immediately next to the gated entrance to Pittville Park at the end of East Approach Drive. When Mrs Gibbons moved in, she advertised for a “thoroughly good cook”, and offered the encouragement that there were “two in family, [and] between-maid kept”.
Other names: Edgbaston House (name in use 1873 – 1915).

Gate House Cottage (name in use 1930 – 47+; site at 24 Walnut Close). The regular change from Stables to Cottage for a secondary building on a larger site happened quite late for Gate House Cottage, around 1930. Charles and Caroline Freeman had already lived through the change from Edgbaston House Stables to Gate House Stables, and by 1930 decided to update the name to the growingly popular Cottage.
Other names: Edgbaston House Stables (name in use 1885 – 1919), Gate House Stables (name in use 1924 – 48+).

Gate House Stables (name in use 1924 – 48+; site at 24 Walnut Close). When the name of Edgbaston House was changed to Gate House in 1922, it wasn’t long before the name of Edgbaston House Stables was changed around 1924 to Gate House Stables, apparently during the occupancy of Charles and Caroline Freeman. Although they introduced the name Gate House Cottage as a replacement in 1930, the older name Gate House Stables continued to be used by some occupants at least until mid century.

Georgina Villa (name in use 1839 – 76; now 18 Wellington Square). Georgina Ludlow, a spinster then living in Paris, purchased the house in 1839, apparently as an investment. It was either named by or after her, or in honour of one of her relatives with the same name. In 1855 Georgina Ludlow married Pierre Jules Cottat at the British Embassy in Paris: the marriage register states that she had previously lived in Bombay. She died a widow in Paris (Rue St Germain) on 18 April 1898, never apparently living in the Pittville house. Wellington House, Wellington Villa were apparently short-lived names for the house in the 1840s.
Other names: Cedar Villa (name in use 1873 – 1894); Cedar Holme (name in use 1894 – 1934); Maitland Nursing Home (name in use 1936 – 45+).

Glenfall Lawn (name in use 1866 – 1911+; Pittville Circus Road). With its semi-detached neighbour Glenfall Villa, Glenfall Lawn was presumably named after nearby Glenfall Terrace (name recorded from 1852), of which the pair almost formed an extension. The terrace was named after the nearby and slightly older Glenfall Street, Fairview. See Hodsdon Gazetteer for the history of the street name, which is probably from older Glenfall House (previously Gutterfall) in Charlton Kings. The first occupant of the Pittville house was Rev. Godfrey Faussett MA and his family. Godfrey Faussett was originally from Oxford, but had more recently been vicar of Edgeworth, between Stroud and Cirencester. The Faussett Collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities in Liverpool was amassed by his grandfather Rev. Bryan Faussett (1720-76), an early amateur archaeologist.

Glenfall Lodge (name in use 1882 – 1950+; now 94 All Saints Road). The rather grander name for Glenfall Villa introduced by former solicitor Henry Maltby and his wife Frances when they moved into the house in 1862. On the name Glenfall, see the entry for the adjoining property Glenfall Lawn.
Other names: Glenfall Villa (name in use 1866 – 1881).

Glenfall Villa (name in use 1866 – 81; now 94 All Saints Road). The first recorded occupant of Glenfall Villa was Mrs Louisa Remington Mills, wife of silk-manufacturer John Remington Mills, in 1866. John Remington Mills had become Liberal MP for Wycombe in 1862, and the house was presumably held in Mrs Mills’s name. John Remington Mills was very substantially wealthy, and had other property elsewhere. He remained an MP until 1868 and in 1871 the couple lived in Tunbridge Wells. On the name Glenfall, see the entry for the adjoining property Glenfall Lawn. In 1882 the name of the house was changed by new owners to Glenfall Lodge.
Other names: Glenfall Lodge (name in use 1882 – 1950).

Glengariff (name in use 1909 – 23); now 3 Albert Road). Cheltenham solicitor Alfred Thomas Ivens and his family moved into their newly built house in Pittville in 1909. They were a well-travelled family, and chose to call it Glengariff. “Glengariff” is the name of a popular resort west of Cork, on the tourist trail near the Lakes of Killarney and Bantry Bay, and it is possible that the Ivens called their house Glengariff in memory of time they spent there. They do not seen to have had a family connection with the place, though Alfred Ivens’s mother was Irish, a McArdle (she died when he was still an infant). Glengariff was quite a popular house name at the time; there was another in nearby Portland Square and would soon be another on Leckhampton Road. The house name remained for ten years after the Ivens left the house at the start of the First World War, but later reverted to 3 Albert Road.
Other names: Damery (1925 – 7).

Glenmore Lodge (name in use 1836 to present; Wellington Square). Also Glenmore (1901 – 1923, 1950). Glenmore Lodge was built in the late 1820s for Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Limond (Lamont), on his return from a career with the Madras Army of the Honourable East India Company. Alexander Limond was born in Ayrshire, and his father David Limond was one-time Town Clerk of Ayr. Alexander  Limont’s step-brother David lived at Dalblair House, on the banks of Glenmuir (also Glenmore) Water, a river in East Ayrshire flowing west through spectacular gorges into Lugar Water at Lugar. Alexander chose the name Glenmore Lodge to commemorate the scenery of his youth, and to remember property owned by his family nearby at Dalblair.

Goldington (name in use 1921 to present; now Goldington House, 125 Evesham Road). Also Goldington House (1946 to present). Mrs Edith Jane Griffith-Jones moved into the house then known St Leonard’s in 1921. She renamed it Goldington after Goldington Bury (also just “The Bury”), the name of the house which she shared with her husband Griffith Jones in Goldington, a suburb of Bedford; her husband had died there in 1908. After his death she also took the unusual step of calling herself “Edith Jane Griffith-Jones”, whereas she had previously been “Edith Jane Jones”. The house name commemorates the house and the region of Bedford in which she had lived with her late husband.
Other names: St Leonard’s (name in use 1872 – 1909).

Gothic Cottage (name in use 1851 – 68; adjacent site now now Clive Lodge, Wellington Square). Gothic Cottage was a surprisingly common name for a small house, often one set in the garden of a larger house, from the early nineteenth century. Other, earlier examples in Cheltenham were located in modern Montpellier Arcade, Sandford Field, and in nearby Portland Street (see Hodsdon, Gazetteer). As elsewhere, the naming refers to the Gothic Revivalist style of architecture popular at the time, particularly evident slightly later along the main terrace on the west side of Wellington Square. Pittville’s Gothic Cottage was built in the nursery grounds originally set out by nurseryman Richard Ware in 1828-33: "a small working man's cottage with pointed windows" (Campbell). It was one of a pair of houses, originally 1 and 2 Victoria Villas, set back from Wellington Square and backing onto Wellesley Road. Slightly later, by 1857, the corner property had become Flesk Cottage. In 1851 Gothic Cottage was occupied by gardener Job Dyer and his family.
Other names: Clive Lodge (name in use 1939 to present).

Grange, The (name in use 1888 to present day; The Grange, Evesham Road). A conventional name for a country house or, more specifically, for a farmhouse or outbuilding on a larger property, as was the case here. The only other Grange in Pittville is Cotswold Grange in Pittville Circus Road; the name is generally applied to buildings older than those in Pittville. The house was also called Marle Hill House, in contrast to Marle Hill, the main estate house; but Marle Hill itself was often called Marle Hill House, which may have pushed Marle Hill House to become The Grange (though the two names seem to have overlapped for many years at the end of the nineteenth century).
Other names: Marle Hill House (name in use 1830 – 1920).

Grange Stables (name in use 1911; site at 2 Huntsfield Close, Pittville). At this period “Stables” are normally residences (outbuildings) for the chauffeur (or for the male staff) of a larger house on the same site, and this is no exception. In 1911 chauffeur John Gunnell lived here, along with the butler of The Grange, Harry Challan. In the previous year the occupier of The Grange itself, the Right Hon. Lord Kingsale, had registered a motor car to his own use: a green 20-horsepower Humber, registration number AD 1605), which John Gunnell was doubtless charged to maintain. This accommodation does not seem to be listed at any other date.

Greenfield (name in use 1934 – 50+; now 90 Evesham Road). The left-hand side of a semi-detached pair with Broadway, both houses boasting simple names, unlike the two other contemporaneous pairs Lomond/Kileague and Longhope/Rosslyn at Nos 82/84 and 86/88 Evesham Road. The name Greenfield was given to the house by the first residents David Davies and his wife Jessie Emma, when they moved into their newly built residence from 31 (formerly 2) Pittville Lawn about 1934. The name appears to have no particular resonance for their families, in the case of David Davies from Breconshire, and in his wife’s case from Cheltenham and Uley. It would be possible to speculate on reasons for the name, but none can currently be proved. Greenfield was not an uncommon house name, reminiscent of rural, open meadows; there had for many years been a house called Greenfield in The Park in Cheltenham.

Green Gates (name in use 1937 – 45+; now 56 Albert Road). This conventional descriptive name, characteristic of a feature of the property, was given to her newly built property by Anna Tuke (née Boyd), widow of Arthur William Tuke, of the Indian Medical Service; they had married and lived in India before retiring to the Cheltenham/Bishop’s Cleeve area. Green Art Deco “Sunburst” gates were very much the rage at the time; it may also be significant that a “pair [of] green wooden gates”, each 12ft 9in high and 3ft 6in wide, was offered for sale in May 1948 at nearby 4 Berkeley Place (Gloucestershire Echo).

Groundsman’s Cottage (name in use 1939; now part of Pittville School, Albert Road). The groundman at the new site for Pate’s Grammar School for Girls on Albert Road was Cyril Cambray, who lived on-site with his wife and daughter; the name is purely descriptive of its occupant. Later the accommodation was referred to as one of the “School House Cottages”. In 1946, when the post of Groundsman at the school was being advertised, candidates were informed that the job came with a “good cottage in School Grounds”. See also School Cottage and Pittville Girls Grammar School.

The Gryphons (name in use 1888 to present; Pittville Circus Road). The house was built for Cheltenham solicitor William Henry Mellersh, and occupied by him, his wife Jane Sinnet Griffith Mellersh, and family until well into the twentieth century. William Mellersh himself died at The Gryphons in 1931, aged 87. Perhaps the name comes from stone gryphons which originally surmounted the gate posts, but if they existed they and the original house have been replaced. A gryphon (also griffin, griffon) is a mythological and heraldic creature with the head, wings, and talons of an eagle and the body of a lion.

Gundulf (name in use 1890-1901; now Parkgate, West Approach Drive). The house name was changed from 4 Beaufort Villas to Gundulf in 1890 by the then occupant Col. Richard Arthur Sargeaunt, who served for over thirty-three years as an officer in the Royal Engineers. Gundulf was the name of a monk at the abbey of Bec in Normandy who became Bishop of Rochester under William the Conqueror and was employed by William for his talents as a military and church architect: he supervised the construction of the White Tower (in the Tower of London) and Rochester Cathedral. Since their establishment in the eighteenth century the Royal Engineers have traditionally looked back to Gundulf as the founder of the modern science of military engineering, and as the first “royal” engineer, and this is commemorated in the house name conferred by Col. Richard Sargeaunt, R.E.
Other names: Lorraine House (name in use 1902 – 63+).

Gwernant Villa (name in use 1861 – 1950+; now Berkeley House, Pittville Circus Road). Also Gwernant (1876 – 1950+). Gwernant Villa is the first recorded name for this house, conferred by its first resident Caulfield Tynte Lloyd Williams when he moved in with his wife Anne in 1861. Caulfield Lloyd Williams had recently inherited the family seat, Gwernant Park, near Newcastle-Emlyn, in Cardiganshire, on the death of his father Edward Lloyd Williams (Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire) in July 1860. In the 1860s the Cheltenham Looker-On often records the Lloyd Williamses returning to Gwernant Park in Cardiganshire: they maintained both residences, with Gwernant Villa as their Cheltenham home. Caulfield Lloyd Williams was elected Sheriff of Cardiganshire in 1869. The road by his Cheltenham property was once known as Gwernant Close, after the house (now Selkirk Close) (see Hodsdon, Gazetteer).

Haddo (name in use 1888 to present; Pittville Circus Road). In 1888 (Cheltenham Looker-On, 2 June), Col. Thomas Peebles and his family moved into the house from Sunnyside, nearby on Pittville Circus Road. It is probably named after Haddo House in Aberdeenshire, a Scottish stately home now owned by the National Trust for Scotland. Thomas Peebles was born into a naval family near the dockyards in Chatham, Kent, but his parents were both Scottish. The precise birthplace of Thomas’s father Thomas Peebles is not certain, but his mother Ann (née Bruce) was born in Aberdeenshire in the 1780s and so the name of Haddo House is likely to have held fond memories for her, and perhaps also for her husband.

Halsey House (name in use 1873 – 1950+; now Devonshire House, Wellington Road). Primrose Lawn was renamed Halsey House on the arrival of retired Indian Civil Service police inspector Albemarle Bettington and his family in late 1872 or early 1873. Prior to moving to Cheltenham, the Bettingtons had lived and raised their young family in Sharnbrook on the Great Ouse in Bedfordshire, the home village of Albemarle’s wife Susanna (née Gibbard). Susanna Bettington’s family had extensive property around Sharbrook, including Halsey Wood on the modern A6 just to the north of the village.
Other names: Primrose Lawn (name in use 1833 – 87).

Handley Cross (name in use 1911 – 50+; site of Stanley Lawn, Albert Road (demolished)). Old Indian Civil Service hand Francis Frederick Handley returned to Britain in 1900 and brought his family to live in Cheltenham, at first at Eslington, in Thirlestaine Road, and then, from 1911, at Handley Cross, formerly Stanley Lawn, in Albert Road. He chose the name Handley Cross for at least two reasons: firstly, it was a play on the family’s surname; secondly, it was the name of an extremely popular comic novel by Robert Smith Surtees, first published in 1843. The novel Handley Cross was one of Surtees’s tales of John Jorrocks, the good-natured sporting cockney grocer turned Master of Fox Hounds. The book had a title appropriate for a Cheltenham house name as Handley Cross in the novel is a spa reminiscent of Cheltenham and Leamington; also, in real life Francis Frederick Handley was a keen horseman, and had served as a Troop Sergeant in the Calcutta Horse whilst in India. The Handleys left Handley Cross in 1929, but the name remained into the second half of the twentieth century.
Other names: Stanley Lawn (name in use 1873 – 1911).

Hartford House (name in use 1921 – 44; now 102 Evesham Road). James Duncuft was a well-respected businessman from Oldham, who had risen to become Managing Director of Emmott and Wallshaw’s cotton-spinning and manufacturing business. In the early twentieth century he moved into Hartford House, Werneth, in Oldham with his wife Hannah and their household. The Duncuft family had acquired the house as a result of the marriage in 1853 of Isaiah Duncuft of Westwood House, Oldham to Mary Alice Platt, daughter of Henry Plat of Hartford House. In 1915 cotton-spinner James Duncuft died, at the age of 54, and his wife moved to Pittville, changing the name of her new house from the idiosyncratic Caza Eschalaz (earlier Evesham Lawn) to Hartford House, in memory of the last house in Oldham she had shared with her husband.
Other names: Casa Echalaz (name in use 1897 – 1914); Evesham Lawn (name in use 1881 – 96).

Harwood House (name in use 1837 to present; from 1889 – 1934 known as Wellington Court; Wellington Square). Bought and occupied from 1832 by Colonel William Larkins Watson CB, founder member of the Bengal Club (1827) and sometime Adjutant-General of the Army (East India Company). It was retained in the family’s ownership till 1888, when its name was changed to Wellington Court. Watson and his wife Sarah Marshall were both born in India, and raised their family there. Despite the Watson family’s long association with the house, the name cannot yet be linked to them or related families with any certainty, and may have been conferred by the original owner or architect. Several houses named Harwood House and Harwood Lodge predated the Pittville Harwood House, as did Lord Harewood’s Harewood House (often pronounced as if Harwood). The name reverted from Wellington Court to Harwood House around 1934.
Other names: Wellington Court (name in use 1889 – 1936), Kashmir Court (name in use 1925 – 35).

Hawksworth (name in use 1894 to present; Hawksworth, 26 Albert Road). The house name was changed from Melcombe House to Hawksworth with the arrival of elderly spinster Ann Ord in 1894. She chose the name to commemorate her mother Isabella Frances Hawksworth (d. 1873) and her mother’s family. The Hawksworths trace their line back beyond Sir Walter Hawksworth (also Hawkesworth and Hoxworth; 1^st Baronet, 1660-83) of Hawksworth, near Guiseley in Yorkshire.
Other names: Vista Villa (name in use 1861 – 6); Melcombe Villa (name in use 1867 – 78); Melcombe House (name in use 1878 – 93).

Heath Lodge (name in use 1868 to present; Pittville Circus). Heath Lodge has not changed its name since it was first so called in 1868, when the Rev. Maurice Allen Smelt and his wife Hannah moved in. The Smelts moved to Cheltenham from Hampshire, where Maurice Smelt had recently been Senior Curate at Petersfield (1861-3) and finally rector of Medstead, near Alton. They brought the name Heath Lodge with them, as it was the name of the house they lived in for most of their stay at Petersfield. Heath Lodge in Petersfield is now an elegant Grade 2-listed Georgian house overlooking Petersfield Heath, on Sussex Road, Petersfield. Rev. Smelt MA FRAS remained very active in Cheltenham, providing the Cheltenham Chronicle with weekly weather reports for Cheltenham, from statistics collected at his observatory at Heath Lodge, and he and his wife also maintained their charity work with the poor and disadvantaged in Cheltenham.

Heathfield Lodge (name in use 1841 – 1950+; now 69 Pittville Lawn). Heathfield Lodge was named indirectly after the village Heathfield in East Sussex. The house was bought by Lieutenant-Colonel William Elliott of Reading, Berkshire from Cheltenham builder Henry Haines in 1839. Elliott was the son of the Rev. William Elliott, for many years Vicar of Trim, Co. Meath, who is said to have bent the rules in 1791 to help the young Arthur Wellesley become Trim’s MP. The Elliotts were distant relatives of General Sir Gilbert Eliott (also Elliott, Eliott), 1^st Baron of Heathfield, renowned and honoured for his gallant defence of Gibraltar 1779-83, during the American War of Independence (see The Elliots: the story of a border clan by Dora and Arthur Eliott of Stobs, published in 1986), and the house was doubtless named after William’s illustrious ancestor. Lt.-Col. William Elliott died and was buried at Niagara in 1795, while serving as the commander of the Royal Canadian Rifle Regiment. There is a memorial to him in the Minster, Cheltenham. Later called Regency Lodge.
Other names: Llyndda (name in use 1923 – 37); Regency Lodge (name in use 1938 to present); Upnor (1) (name in use 1916 – 25).

Highbury (name in use 1913 – 15; now Richmond, West Approach Drive). Frederick Henry Collins lived at Trouville on the Evesham Road, but also owned this house. When he moved in during 1913 he renamed it Highbury, but the motivation for this name is not clear. Collins was a “house furnisher”, originally from Cornwall, but he worked in Gloucester before retiring to Cheltenham and then Weston-super-Mare. Neither he, his wife Mary Louisa, or his daughter Violet Anne appear to have any connection with Highbury in north London, or with other Highburys, including the independent (Congregational) Highbury College in Islington.
Other names: Bexley (name in use 1887 – 1917); Claremont (name in use 1907 – 19); Mount Sorrell (name in use 1931 – 48).

Hollym (name in use 1911 – 20; now 56 Prestbury Road). Miss Georgina Augusta Lacy gave the name Hollym to her house in Bayshill Lawn, Cheltenham, and she brought the name with her when she moved to 6 Pittville Villas in 1911. The name Hollym harked back to the village of that name in Holderness, East Yorkshire, east of Hull, where her maternal grandfather, the Revd. Robert Barker, had been Vicar from the 1780s and where her mother had been brought up. Georgina commemorated her mother’s heritage by introducing the name Hollym to her residence in Bayshill Lawn, and then transferred it to Pittville when she moved in 1911. The house reverted to being known by its number by 1920.

Holmains (name in use 1904 – 22; now 19 Wellington Square). Holmains was known as Wellington Villa until widow Isabel Carruthers (née Smith) moved in with her sister Mary Ann Murray in 1904, from Christ Church Lodge on Western Road, Cheltenham. They changed the house name to Holmains in memory of Isabel’s husband, John Thomas Carruthers, who died in Cheltenham in 1896. Holmains is the name of an estate east of Dumfries in Scotland. The Chiefs of Holmains have been Carruthers since the late Middle Ages, and various branches had lived at nearby Denrie and Dormont; the village Carrutherstown is just south of these villages. But John Thomas Carruthers’s family had lived in the Stroud/Stonehouse area for the previous two centuries. It is possible that they simply claimed a relationship with the Holmains Carruthers, or that they were related, though the details of the relationship are not yet clear.
Other names: Upnor (2) (name in use 1922 – 38); Wellington Villa (1) (name in use 1892 – 1950).

Holmdale (name in use 1880 to present; Pittville Circus Road). Also Holme Dale (1881). This is the first and only name for the Pittville house, recorded from 1880 when the young Rev Benjamin Campbell Littlewood MA (Oxon) moved in with his recently widowed mother Sarah Campbell Derby Littlewood. Sarah Littlewood’s husband Benjamin (formerly of Greenways, Shurdington) had died at Pittville Hall (now St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road) the previous year. The Rev Littlewood had previously been a curate at Codsall, Staffs (1877-80), and was in 1880 a clergyman without a living or “cure of souls”, and advertised himself from Holmdale as a “Priest […] of moderate views, [in search of] permanent work in the neighbourhood of Cheltenham” (John Bull, 11 September, 1880). After several years as a licensed preacher in the Gloucester diocese, the Rev Littlewood was appointed Vicar of Warfield, Berkshire, but returned to live with his mother at Holmdale three years before his death in 1911. Holmdale was a conventional house and road name by the 1880s, and at present there are no particular leads as to why it was chosen for the name of the house in Pittville Circus Road. See Holm Dene.

Holm Dene (name in use 1886 – 1950+; now 104 Evesham Road). Holm Dene was the name by which the house was first known, and it is likely to have been chosen by the house’s first resident, retired bank manager Adolphus Hume, who moved to Cheltenham with his family after his wife’s death in Tonbridge in 1885. The name may have no connection with the family other than the loose similarity of sound between Hume, home, and Holm; it was in Evesham Road it was next-door to two other Denes: Trevor Dene (1874) on one side, and Iseultdene (1889) on the other. It was one of a number of names becoming popular in the 1870s and 80s which evocated a generalised rural idyll fading into the past in later Victorian England (see also Deerhurst, Ravenhurst). See also Holmdale.

(Holy) Trinity Vicarage (name in use 1891 – 1950+; Camden House, Clarence Square). For many years this house was known as Camden House. Its name changed as a result of the legacy given by Miss Susan Mary Stokes, daughter of religious writer and editor George Stokes (see Tyndale), after her death in 1887. Susan left two houses to Holy Trinity Church in Portland Street, but both were considered unsuitable to become Holy Trinity Vicarage. They were therefore sold, and Camden House was bought with proceeds from the sale. The Reverent Percival Smith moved in with his family in 1890, from nearby at 1 Easton Villa (now 12 Albert Street). The house remained as a vicarage for many years, and at least into the 1970s, before reverting to its old style of Camden House.
Other names: Camden House (name in use 1837 – 89 and 1950+ to present).

Homespring House: see Deanwood House (name in use 1891 – 1938); Vallombrosa (name in use 1848 – 90).

Homewood: see Cleeve House (name in use 1914 to present); Dunboyne (name in use 1891 – 1913).

Horstead House (name in use 1924 – 41; now Brompton House, East Approach Drive). The house name dates from 1924, when Brigadier-General Graham Thomas George Edwards CB moved into the old Altidore with his wife Mary. Graham Thomas was commissioned Lieutenant in the 20th Hussars in 1885 and served in the South African War of 1901-2, before leading his troops as part of the 5th Cavalry Brigade in northern Europe during the First World War. But the house name derives from the village of Horstead in Norfolk. Graham Edwards’s wife Mary Edwards was born Mary Pettus Batcheler, in London. But her father, Horatio Pettus Batcheler, was a native of Norfolk. His father, the Revd. Thomas John Batcheler, lived at Horstead Hall, Horstead, north of Norwich. The name of Horstead House in Pittville commemorates Mary Edwards’s family home in Norfolk.
Other names: Altidore Villa (name in use 1866 – 1925); Fenwick Lodge (name in use 1941 – 50+).

Horstead House Cottage (name in use 1926 – 41; now Beaver House and Southfield, Marston Road). When the name of Altidore Villa was changed to Horstead House it was likely that Altidore Stables would change its name too. Both of these changes happened in 1926, with Altidore Stables changing to Horstead House Cottage, using the designation “Cottage” which had become normal in the early twentieth century in Pittville for houses that had originally been called “Stables”. The new occupants of Horstead House Cottage at the time of the name change were waiter William Arthur and his wife Freda Brunning; William had married Freda Drew in 1924.
Other names: Altidore Stables (name in use 1911 – 23); Fenwick Lodge Cottage (name in use 1943 – 50+).

Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911; now St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). In April 1897 Leonard Myddleton Wallich MA advertised a new private school at Pittville Hall, the house that he, his wife Mary, and their family had just moved into in Pittville Circus Road. His father the Rev. Leonard Wallich had previously retired from Norfolk to Cheltenham, where he had died in 1894. By July 1897 the residents of Cheltenham were informed that the school was to be called Inholmes School, a prep school for boarders and day-pupils, opening that Christmas. Leonard Wallich was not new to schoolmastering: he had run Chichester House School in Worthing in Sussex in the early 1890s, and had then moved in 1893 to Burgess Hill in Sussex, where he founded the first Inholmes School, taking the name from the large house, Inholmes, where the school was based. There were two farms in the immediate area called Inholmes (Great and Little), from which the Sussex house doubtless got its name. Ultimately, the name probably derives from the Manor of Inholme in Lambourn, Berkshire, united by the Aldridge family who owned Inholme in Lambourn as well as property in Sussex. For Leonard, the name for his new home was based on practical considerations, maintaining continuity for the school he was translating from Sussex to Gloucestershire.
Other names: Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35).

Inver (name in use 1897 – 1910; now Park House, Wellington Square). Elizabeth McMunn and her sisters Margaret, Hannah, and Rebecca (Ruby) moved into Inver in January 1897 with their nephew Hans Siree Hamilton, taking the house (previously called Dover House) over from Mrs Richard Wilson. All five of the new arrivals came originally from Donegal in Ireland, and the four aunts (and Hans’s mother Alicia McMunn) had been born in the village of Inver (Gaelic Inbhear river-mouth, estuary) on the southern Donegal coast. The new house name reminded them of their youth in the north-west of Ireland.
Other names: Dover House (name in use 1874 – 96), Beckaford House (name in use 1913 – 90+).

Irving House (1): see Strathdurn (name in use 1870 – 1950+); (2): see Acton Lodge (name in use 1873 – 92); Askham House (name in use 1892 – 1950+).

Iseultdene (name in use 1887 – 1891; now 106 Evesham Road). This was the third of a short stretch of newly built houses in Evesham Road to be given a name ending in Dene (-dene) in the mid to late 1880s (see also Trevor Dene and Holm Dene). The motivation for the initial element Iseult comes from the Arthurian legend in which Tristan was dispatched to bring Irish princess Iseult (Isolde in Wagner’s version) to marry his uncle King Mark of Cornwall; the couple fall in love when they accidentally take a love potion and the tragedy unfolds. In 1887 Lydia Lillingston, widow of Edward Lillingston, late curate of Holy Trinity Church, moved into the Pittville house with her son George (George Brooks Percy Spooner Lillingston). George was an artist, fascinated by Cornish seascapes. In the late 1880s, he travelled down from Cheltenham on trips to Penzance, where he is associated with the Newlyn group of artists. By the time of the 1891 census he and his mother had moved to Penzance. His attraction to the Irish princess drawn to Cornwall is further attested by the fact that he named his yacht Iseult (see Lake’s Falmouth Packet 8 September, 1888).
Other names: Edenholme (name in use 1892 – 1950).

Kashmir Court (name in use 1925 – 35; now Harwood House, Wellington Square). Also Cashmir Court (1932-4). This house was known immediately previously as Wellington Court, but the motivation behind the name Kashmir Court is not clear (other than that Court was carried forward to the new name, and perhaps that Wellington spend much of his early military career in India). The name was introduced when Major John Bertram Haddon moved there with his wife Beatrice Eleanor in 1925. He had grown up in Pittville, living with his family at 1 Wellington Square West in 1881, and at Clarefield, 94 Evesham Road in 1891. But there is no evidence that he served in India, or more particularly in Kashmir. The owner of the house in 1926 was a Mrs Walsh, who has not been further identified.
Other names: Harwood House (name in use 1837 to present), Wellington Court (name in use 1889 – 1936).

Kenilworth House (name in use 1837 to present; Kenilworth House, 27 Pittville Lawn). Kenilworth House was replaced by simply Kenilworth (in use 1895 to present) after Major-General Charles Moore moved into the house about 1894; both forms are found today.The first resident of Kenilworth House was William Buckler Astley. He only stayed a year, but he is likely to have named the property. Astley was born in 1781 in Wiltshire, but he belonged to the long-established Warwickshire family of Astleys, and doubtless heard stories from his father Francis Dugdale Astley of Astley Castle near Nuneaton and its grander counterpart Kenilworth Castle. Astley Castle was recently the subject of a major restoration project, winning the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2013. Latterly the Astley family estates had been at Barston, about seven miles from Kenilworth, and Francis Dugdale Astley was an absentee landlord receiving rents from property in Barston during William Buckler Astley’s youth.  The name of Kenilworth House was likely intended to hint at the old Astley fortunes in Warwickshire.

Kennards (name in use 1937 – 48; now 52 Albert Road). When Cheltenham Medical Officer of Health John Middleton Martin MD retired in 1937 he and his wife moved from Tower House on Pittville Circus to a newly built house on Albert Road, which was called Kennards. The reason for the name is unknown. Martin’s family came from Exeter in Devon, and as a surname Kennard is most strongly associated with Devon and with Sussex and Kent. A cluster of houses containing the name Kennards (also Kenwards) in the village of Leigh in Kent was owned in the early nineteenth century, by Revd. Nathaniel May, and subsequently by other members of his family; “May” was the middle name of John Middleton Martin’s father, John May Martin, but no connection has been traced. John Middleton Martin died soon after retiring, in 1940; his wife lived on at Kennards until her death in 1948, after which the house seems to have been known by its number.

Kilreague (name in use 1934 – 7; 84 Evesham Road). Godwin Leonard Scudamore and his wife Susan moved into the newly built Kilreague on the Evesham Road around 1934. The name commemorated Godwin Scudamore’s family home in Herefordshire. His father had been named Godwin Leonard Kilreague Scudamore (1893-1975), born in Bargoed, Glamorganshire. But his father was brought up on the farm of Kilreague (also spelt Kilrege and Kilrhyg), just outside Llangarron, near Ross-on-Wye. The Scudamores were an old Llangarron family. The name Kilreague stuck with Godwin and Susan Scudamore when they later moved to Tivoli Road in the late 1930s: they renamed their Tivoli house Kilreague.

Kingsmuir (name in use 1885 to present; now Kingsmuir Hotel, Pittville Circus). Originally called 2 Oakley Villas, Kingsmuir acquired its present name with the arrival of Major-General Robert Sutton Burge, his wife Rebecca, and their children. Until a few years earlier, the family had lived in India, where Robert Sutton was a senior and decorated officer in the Madras Army. They gave the house its new name after the house, Kingmuir, that they had leased for a while on Worcester Road, Sutton, Surrey. The Sutton house was owned by East India merchant David Leckie from Peebles, Peebleshire, and he and his family had moved out temporarily and were lodging in Marylebone when the Burges lived in his house in 1881. Leckie named his house in Sutton after the Kings Muir just over the Tweed from central Peebles (muir = moor or moorland).

Kingston Cottage (1904 to present; now 7 Pittville Crescent Lane). This is perhaps the “Stables, back Pittville Villas” occupied by the Cooper family at the time of the 1871 census, but the name Kingston Cottage dates from around 1904, when it is listed by “maid” Annie Lewis as her home address when she married Thomas Edward Breeden, of Hereford. The Breeden household lived there together for a while. The name Kingston was borrowed from other nearby uses of the name: Kingston Garden is shown on the 1855-7 Cheltenham Old Town Survey as the name for the plot of public land immediately opposite the cottage, before Windsor Street; further up Windsor Street on the left was the terrace known since around 1840s as Kingston Place; and by the end of the century Kingston House sat, as it does today, at the Prestbury Road end of Windsor Street. The ulterior origin of Kingston as a street and terrace name has not been investigated here.

Kingswood House: see Moultondale (name in use 1881 – 1950+).

Kirkella (name in use 1901 – 39; now North Hall, Pittville Circus Road). One of the first actions of Francis Brandt JP when he moved into the house formerly called Berkeley Hall on Pittville Circus Road in January 1901 was to place a notice in the Gloucestershire Echo saying that from that time forward the house would be known as Kirkella. The name Kirkella was chosen to commemorate the village of Kirk Ella, five miles west of central Hull, in which his mother Margaret Sarah Brandt née Dobson had been born around 1805, and where her parents brewer Matthew Dobson and his wife Mary had owned a grand house in Church Lane.
Other names: Berkeley Hall (name in use 1867 – 1926); North Hall (name in use 1923 to present).

Kyrle Villa (name in use 1849 – 69; now Priors Lodge, Pittville Circus). Kyrle Villa was named after John Kyrle (1637-1727), an extensive public benefactor to the town of Ross-on-Wye, celebrated by Alexander Pope as “the Man of Ross” in his Moral Essay “On the Use of Riches” (1734). Kyrle gave money towards the reconstruction of Ross church and the Causeway to Witton Bridge, as well as providing funds of local needy children to attend school. The first owner of Kyrle Villa was its builder, Edward Cope, who died there in 1849. Cope was born and brought up in Ross-on-Wye, and named his house after one of Ross-on-Wye’s best-known philanthropists.
Other names: Phayrecot (name in use 1867 – 83); Nightingale House (name in use 1917 – 19); Ash Priors (name in use 1883 – 1950+).

Lake House (name in use 1911 to present; now Lake House, 91 Pittville Lawn). There are two early examples of Lake House for the house until then known as Lake View; these are in 1911 and 1912. Perhaps these occurrences appeared in the directories in error, or perhaps there was an early attempt to change the name, which failed (maybe due to the fact that there was already a Lake House in Prestbury). In general, Lake View was consistently used as the house name until the arrival of the Revd. John William Bishop and his wife Jean Chapman Bishop in 1927. While the Revd. Bishop was otherwise engaged, his wife Jean and co-resident Mary Milroy ran the house for a while as a vegetarian guest house. There was a tendency for Villa and to some extent View to be altered to the apparently more substantial House or Lodge in the early twentieth century, as happened here. The name survived them, and is still used.
Other names: Lake View (name in use 1882 – 1925).

Lake View (name in use 1882 – 1925; now Lake House, 91 Pittville Lawn). A conventional descriptive name, comparable to the common Sea View: the large semi-detached house Lake View, attached to Ravenhurst, 93 Pittville Lawn, immediately overlooks the main lake in Pittville. It was originally named 1 Essex Villas (see Capel Court for the association with Pittville of the Earls of Essex), but was changed to Lake View in 1882 with the arrival of Colonel James Smyth and his household from Vittoria House, Cheltenham. Col. Smyth had previously seen service with the 69^th (South Lincolnshire) Regiment of Foot in Canada and elsewhere.
Other names: Lake House (name in use 1911 to present).

Lanchester (name in use 1937 – 45; now 54 Albert Road). Cheltenham-born William Henry Hamlin, fishing-rod maker, moved into his newly built house Lanchester with his family in 1835. There is no clear motivation for the house name; in the 1930s almost all references in the Cheltenham newspapers to the word Lanchester referred to the luxury car marque, alongside occasional allusions to the village of Lanchester in County Durham, though no family members appear to have links with Durham.

Lansdown House: see East Hayes (name in use 1844 – 1950+).

Laurel Lodge (name in use 1835 to present; Wellington Square). The two semi-detached villas built by Mrs Eleanor Wallace and her daughter Eliza next to their own house The Aviary on Wellington Square were originally called Laurel Lodge West and Laurel Lodge East (later Laurel Lodge and Percy House). As the Wallaces were keen gardeners, and often won awards at the Pittville Horticultural Society exhibitions in the Pump Room, it is likely that the conventional name Laurel Lodge was given by them in relation to a distinctive aspect of planting in the two gardens. The name Laurel Lodge first appears in public in relation to the Laurel Lodge School established on the site by Mrs Mary Mechelen in 1835, and intended as a boarding school for twelve girls.  Mrs Mechelen had previously run similar establishments in Bath and then Bristol, but her husband Joseph (also Josiah) was being sued for bankruptcy in 1835, and the finances of the school were unstable. Mrs Mechelen could not meet her rent (agreed with the Wallaces as £170 per annum) and the school moved next year to Sussex House, Winchcombe Street, before the unfortunate Mechelens left Cheltenham in the late 1830s.

Leamington House (name in use 1835 – 1950+; now 6 Prestbury Road). This was the house of builder Nathaniel Walford, who moved here from Fairview, until bankruptcy interrupted his career in the mid 1830s. The house is the first in the group of houses, Leamington Place, from which it was named. Leamington Place was presumably named after the rising spa of Leamington (Hodsdon, Gazetteer).

Linden Lawn (name in use 1891 – 8; 19 Clarence Square). Linden (= lime tree) is a popular element in house names. The house in Clarence Square was simply known as No 19 until the arrival of clothier and loan agent Hurman Samuel and his family in 1891. A house called Linden Lawn already existed in Charlton Kings at the time, and the Hurmans' choice of house name may have been influenced by this, or by Linden House, College Lawn, in Cheltenham. Despite the frequency of Linden generally in house names, Linden Lawn itself is not recorded elsewhere in the country in contemporary newspapers. However, there is another possible influence. Both of Hurman Samuel's parents were born in Poland, as was the father of his wife Sarah. The linden tree is a widespread favourite in Poland, where it is common in place names and folklore and is regarded as symbolic of summer and good fortune, especially in the home. The Polish for the month of July is called Lipiec, after lipa, the linden tree. In addition, in the early twentieth century, this branch of the Samuel family donated several drinking fountains to parks and other locations in their previous home town of Cardiff, in honour of Hurman's parents Moses and Esther. It seems likely that Linden Lawn connotes not only the leisured luxury of an elegant house, but was also reminiscent for the Hurmans of the former life they had led in Poland.

Lisle House (name in use 1867 to present; Clarence Square): Lisle Villa (name in use 1841 – 1866); St Martin's (name in use 1918 – 25).

Lisle Villa (name in use 1841 – 66; now Lisle House, Clarence Square). The house Lisle Villa was named after the Lisle family, who held property in Hampshire in the seventeenth century. The original occupant of Lisle Villa, Harriet March Phillips, was the daughter of Thomas March and Susan Lisle (Thomas March adopted the surname Phillipps when he inherited the Garendon estate in Leicestershire). Harriet’s brother Charles March Phillipps adopted the ancient de Lisle crest and arms. After her death in 1859 her nieces Lucy Frances and Rose March Phillipps resided at the house until they moved back to Leicestershire in the early 1860s, putting Lisle Villa up for sale. The new owner William Donald, newly returned from Australia, decided to change the name to Lisle House on his arrival in 1866.
Other names: Lisle House (name in use 1867 to present); St Martin's (name in use 1918 – 25).

Little Evesham House (name in use 1935 to present; Little Evesham House, Wellington Road). In 1933 W. H. Bowd made a planning application to Cheltenham Borough Council to divide Evesham House, in Evesham Road, into two dwellings. This was approved, and by 1935 Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Northern was living in the new semi-detached dwelling attached to the old, reduced Evesham House. The new dwelling was not particularly “little” compared to Evesham House, but it was secondary in that a new front door had to be constructed, this time on Wellington Road, not Evesham Road. Lieut.-Col. Northern did not stay there long before butcher Ethel Davis and her ex-policeman husband Ernest moved in, staying there up to the mid-century.

Llyndda (name in use 1923 – 37; 69 Pittville Lawn). Lucy Emily Goodlake (née Morris) came from Swansea, daughter of Glamorganshire Magistrate George Byng Morris. After the death of her husband Colonel Goodlake she moved to Pittville, buying the house then called Heathfield Lodge in late 1921. The new name she gave her house was both amusing, and reminded people of her Welsh heritage. In Welsh the word llyn means “lake” and dda means “well”, or “good”, so together they form a translation of her own surname, Goodlake. Her principal interest was showing dogs. The name Llyndda first occurs in the dog name “Gerry Llyndda”, or “Gerry Goodlake”. Once she had named her house Llyndda her dogs were given names of the style “Ruth of Llyndda”, as she developed Llyndda as a brand by which her dogs could be identified within the dog fancy. She died at Llyndda in Pittville Lawn in 1936, and the name did not long survive her, being changed by the next inhabitants to Regency Lodge.
Other names: Heathfield Lodge (name in use 1841 – 1950+); Regency Lodge (name in use 1938 to present); Upnor (1) (name in use 1916 – 25).

Lomond (name in use 1933 – 6; 82 Evesham Road). When the set of houses from 82 to 92 Evesham Road were built in the 1930s, they each had short names. After Evesham Road adopted a universal numbering system in 1937 these names tended to fade away, and the house numbers took their place. Lomond was so named when Thomas Maitland Roy and his wife Frances Margaret moved in during 1933; they had previously been living in Sydenham Villas Road. Their house name commemorates the Scottish origins of Thomas Roy. Although he was born in Cheshire, his families, the Roys and the Maitlands, came from Berwickshire and Scotland. He and his sister were substantial benefactors from the so-called “Lathrisk Fortune” of gold found in a chest at Lathrisk, overlooking the Lomond Hills in Fife; his ancestors had a family claim to a share of the fortune. He may also have fancied a link to Rob Roy (McGregor), the Scottish hero whose “Cave” was on the banks of Loch Lomond, much further west in Stirlingshire.

Longhope (name in use 1936 – 50+; now 86 Evesham Road). Kelly’s Directory records widow Mrs Florence Emma Gunnell (née Wintle) as the first resident of newly built 86 Evesham Road. She named her house Longhope. In choosing the name she was harking back to her father’s childhood. Thomas Wintle was a stonemason, born in the West Gloucestershire village of Longhope, in the Forest of Dean. He had moved with his wife up into Worcestershire before they started a family, but his youngest daughter Florence remembered the village where the Wintles had lived for several generations, and of which he must have spoken fondly to her.

Longville (name in use 1911 to present; Pittville Circus Road). Soon after Dublin-born John Peyton Lambert, Post Office surveyor, married Bessie Edwards in 1872 the couple moved into Longville House, Cheney Longville, near Church Stretton in Shropshire, where two of their children were born. Later, the family relocated to the Cheltenham area and in 1911 moved into Pittville Circus Road, renaming their house (then called Cotswold Villa) as Longville, after their old house in Shropshire.
Other names: Cornbrash House (name in use 1868 – 9); Cotswold Villa (2) (name in use 1870 – 1903).

Lorraine House (name in use 1902 – 63+; Parkgate, West Approach Road). Also Lorraine (1914 – 26). This house name appears first in a sale advertisement in the Gloucestershire Echo of 1902. It was therefore conferred by the sellers or their agent, and not by the first occupant, General Francis Dawson and his family. Originally 4 Beaufort Villas, prior to the arrival of the Dawsons it had been known as Gundulf. In the 1902 advertisement, applicants were asked to contact Llanvair Lodge, on Hewlett Road; this was the home of the Banks family, who for many years had a stationers’ business on the Promenade. But no reason is apparent for the choice of the name Lorraine House. The name was not unusual, and another already existed in Cheltenham, in Wellington Street, and a third in Park Road, Gloucester. Pittville also had its own Lorraine Villa  (10 Pittville Crescent) until 1903, though no connection between the two is known.
Other names: Gundulf (name in use 1890 – 1901).

Lorraine Villa (name in use 1860 – 1903; now 10 Pittville Crescent). Lorraine Villa was named by Stephen Demainbray, retired solicitor, when he arranged to move into the house in Pittville Crescent Road in 1861 with his wife Emma. The Demainbray papers, in the Gloucestershire Archives, contain Demainbray's agreement to purchase the house in July 1860, followed by the conveyance of October 1860 in which the house is described as "a messuage or dwelling house, Cornbrash Villa, but then intended to be called Lorraine Villa" (Stephen Blake). Although the Demainbray family were of French origin, they came from the central area of France, rather than from Lorraine in the east central region of the country. The Demainbrays were a French Huguenot family, and Stephen’s great-grandfather Stephen Triboudet had fled from France to England after Louis XIVth’s revocation of the Treaty of Nantes (1685), which had given protection from religious persecution to the Huguenot population. The Triboudet family came from Maimbray in the Nevers region of central France (hence the topographic name Demainbray). Stephen’s great-grandfather had died soon after arriving in England, but not before the birth of Stephen’s grandfather, Stephen Charles Demainbray (1710-82), at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. Stephen’s grandfather had in due course been boarded with the family of another Huguenot refugee, the celebrated lecturer on natural philosopher, John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683 – 1744), and in due course became a well-known natural philosopher in his own right, becoming superintendent of the King’s Observatory at Kew. Both men attended the Freemasons’ lodge at the Swan in Long Acre, Covent Garden (an area of Huguenot settlement in London). A Demainbray family story told of how grandfather Demainbray’s mentor Desaguliers had initiated Francis, Duke of Lorraine (and later Holy Roman Emperor), into the Freemasons in The Hague. This was perhaps a factor in the choice of the name Lorraine Villa, though a Lorraine House had just preceded it in Wellington Street (between Bath Road and Oriel Street), Cheltenham, and the family is likely to have had other associations with the Lorraine region. Stephen's own father, Stephen George Francis Triboudet Demainbray, took over as superintendent of the Kew Observatory from his father, and then served as Royal Chaplain and also for many years as Rector of Great Somerford in Wiltshire, where Pittville’s Stephen Demainbray was born in 1803.
Other names: Cornbrash Villa (name in use 1860).

Lothian Villa (name in use 1855 – 1928; now 8 Pittville Lawn). The name Lothian Villa was added to what was then known as 2 Clarendon Villas in 1855, when George Scott MD moved in with his wife and household. George Scott was born in Scotland, and on his marriage certificate is described as of Monimail, Fife, across the Firth of Forth from Lothian. He perhaps received his medical training in Edinburgh, Lothian. The name was clearly important to the family, as one son, born in 1841 in France, was christened “Lothian”.
Other names: Merridale (name in use 1938 – 45+).

Luddenham (name in use 1881 – 93; now Tower House, Pittville Circus). When Major-General John Blaxland (Madras Army) and his wife Ann moved into the house in Pittville Circus in 1881 they changed its name from Steeniecot to Luddenham. The Blaxlands were a Kent family, and the manor of Luddenham, near Faversham, had been owned by the family (and in particular by another John Blaxland) for a number of years in the mid eighteenth century. The name had been important to the family, and so when Major-General John Blaxland’s uncles John and Gregory Blaxland went out to New South Wales, they took the name with them. John Blaxford’s property near Sydney was called Luddenham, after the old family estate in Kent, and after he left the region developed to the extent that Luddenham is now the name of a western suburb of Sydney.
Other names: Apsley House (name in use 1844 – 74); Steeniecot (name in use 1875 – 81); St Paul’s Vicarage (name in use 1894 – 1914); Tower House (name in use 1916 to present).

Maisonette (name in use 1833 – 1950+; now 59 Portland Road). To our ears Maisonette is an unusual name for a house. The OED dates the modern use "apartment; self-contained accommodation within a house" only from 1912. But before that - from the late eighteenth century, it carried the original French meaning "small house". In the earliest known English use (1785), Maisonette is the name of a house in Stoke Gabriel, Devonshire, owned by a Cranfield Beecher. In Cheltenham, Col. Michael White Lee and his wife Barrett bought and moved into Maisonette (now 59 Portland Road) in 1833. They lived there until they moved into the much grander Pittville Lawn Villa in Pittville Lawn in the mid 1830s, so they perhaps did regard it as a "small" house. The Lees are presumably responsible for the use of the name Maisonette here. It is probable that they borrowed it from one of the other Maisonettes in the country, of which at least two are repeatedly referred to in old newspapers: the house in Stoke Gabriel, later occupied by the family of Admiral Thomas Hicks and then by Richard Parrott Hulme, and a house in Inglestone, Essex, variously occupied by Kortrights, Brooks, and Maynes until the late 1830s. It is not known whether Col. Michael White Lee or his wife had any links with these families through their military and West Indian connections.

Maitland Nursing Home (name in use 1936 – 1945+; now 18 Wellington Square; the Home expanded into 19 Wellington Square in 1937). Also Maitland (1937 – 50+). The Symondses bought 18 Wellington Square (then known as Cedarholme) in 1936 and State Registered Nurse Louisa Ruby Symonds set it up as Maitland Nursing Home in the same year, expanding into No 19 in 1937, when the Hodsons left. Her father William Henry Symonds, formerly a Director of Messrs. R. F. Beard’s, the Promenade jewellers, died at the nursing home in 1938. The name Maitland is more common as a surname than as a place name, and in this case doubtless derives from the family of Louisa’s friend Florence E. Maitland, the first-named beneficiary of Louisa’s will proved after her death, at the nursing home, in 1949. Presumably, the Maitland family contributed to the establishment of the nursing home, or were commemorated by the name for other reasons. After Louisa’s death in 1949, the house was sold, as a private residence Maitland, and subsequently reverted to being known by its number.
Other names: Cedar Holme (name in use 1894 – 1934); Cedar Villa (name in use 1873 – 1894); Georgina Villa (name in use 1839 – 76).

Malden Court (name in use 1858 to present; 71 Pittville Lawn). The previous name of the house, Capel Court, commemorated the original landholders the Earls of Essex. When Thomas Champion moved into the property in 1858 he changed the name to Malden Court. The new name still commemorates the Earls of Essex, as one of their subsidiary titles is “Viscount Malden”, from the town of Maldon (formerly also Malden) in Essex. The nearby Malden Road is a later name (see Hodsdon, Gazetteer).
Other names: Capel Court (name in use 1839 – 58).

Malvern Hill Cottage (name in use 1929 to present; now Middle Mews and Malvern Hill Cottage, Marston Road). The stables at Malvern Hill House  had been used as accommodation since at least 1881, when Coachman John Gardner lived there with his family; stables were often fitted out as residential accommodation for grooms or (after the advent of the motor-car) chauffeurs. The “Stables for Malvern Hill House” were renamed Malvern Hill Cottage by 1929, when the occupants were chauffeur Harry Gordon Simonds and his family: the epithet “Cottage” was often applied in Pittville to secondary residences built on a larger site.

Malvern Hill House (name in use 1873 to present; East Approach Road). The name by which Malvern Hill Villa was known after Col. Charles Sidney Hawkins and his family moved in during 1873.
Other names: Malvern Hill Villa (name in use 1859 – 83).

Malvern Hill Villa (name in use 1859 – 83; now Malvern Hill House, East Approach Road). Malvern Hill Villa was offered for sale or let by the builder, Charles Winstone, in 1859 (Cheltenham Looker-On, 5 November) under this name, at the same time as Winstone was offering next-door Marston Villa for sale. Both houses seem to have been named by the developer, rather than the first owner of the house. In his advertisement Winstone drew attention to the “extensive views of all the surrounding hills”, including the Malvern Hills lying twenty miles to the north-west beyond the Pump Room. Malvern Hill Road was an alternative name for Albert Road, but this derives from the house name and not vice versa. See Cotswold Grange and Malvern Hill House.
Other names: Malvern Hill House (name in use 1873 to present).

Marle Hill (1806/09 until demolition in the 1960s). Also Marle Hill House (1813), Marle Hill Mansion (1830). The house was built by Francis Welles on land acquired by him under the Cheltenham Enclosure award of 1806. Originally Marl Hill, the name comes from the subsoil of clay mixed with calcium carbonate (marl) underlying much of Cheltenham, instrumental in creating the mineral waters of the town. The large Marle Hill estate was privately owned and distinct from the Pittville estate. It was eventually acquired for the town by the Borough Council in 1931. See also Marle Hill House on Evesham Road, and Cornbrash House.

Marle Hill House (name in use 1830 – 1920; now The Grange, Evesham Road). Marle Hill House is the name of a grand house built around 1830 on the Evesham Road by Henry Haines in extensive grounds bordering the main Marle Hill estate. The land on which Marle Hill House was built belonged to Robert Capper, who then owned the Marle Hill estate, including its principal residence, known as Marle Hill. The house name Marle Hill House predates the first residents, and is found in sale advertisements of 1830 (Cheltenham Chronicle, 17 June etc.), implying that it was decided on by Capper, perhaps along with his builder and agent. The simple locational name helped to distinguish it for the main residence of Marle Hill, though there were still clearly grounds for confusion. The original Marle Hill had itself originally been known as Marle Hill House (1806-10 map: Hodsdon, Gazetteer), and this confusion may have led to Marle Hill House being changed to The Grange by the 1880s (though the two names overlap in use for some years).
Other names: The Grange (name in use 1888 to present).

Marle Hill House Lodge (1861). A lodge built at the start of the short approach drive to Marle Hill from Evesham Road, and just south of Marle Hill House. The 1861 census lists John Westborough (gardener) and his wife Mary as occupants of the Lodge, which is not otherwise noted by the censuses.

Marle Hill Lodge (also Marl Hill Lodge; 1835 – 71). Marle Hill Lodge was a lodge built just beyond The Grange on Evesham Road. It was occupied from at least 1835; in the 1850s residents William Lusty (greengrocer) and his family moved to 1 Ebenezer Cottages, Larput Place, in St Paul’s, and William Tovey, carpenter, and his family were the occupants in 1871.

Marston Cottage (name in use 1924 to present; now The Coach House and Marston Cottage, Marston Road). Previously Marston Lodge Stables, the house was renamed Marston Cottage, following a common trend to upscale “Stables” to “Cottage” in the early twentieth century. The first occupants recorded in the newly named Marston Cottage were Charles Edward Murphy and his family.
Other names: Marston Lodge Stables (name in use 1911 – 12).

Marston Lodge (name in use 1861 – 1915; house demolished and now rebuilt as St Ives’ Court, East Approach Drive). An early alternative name for Marston Villa, and the name that proved more long-lasting.
Other names: Marston Villa (name in use 1859 – 71).

Marston Lodge Stables (name in use 1911 – 12; now The Coach House and Marston Cottage, Marston Road). A newspaper advertisement shows that there was stabling at Marston Lodge from at least 1866. At the time of the 1911 census the stable block was used as accommodation, for Groom William Percy Pound and his family. In keeping with many residences called “Stables” on the Pittville estate, the name was changed to ”Cottage” in the early decades of the twentieth century: see Marston Cottage.
Other names: Marston Cottage (name in use 1924 to present).

Marston Villa (name in use 1859 – 71; house demolished and now rebuilt as St Ives’ Court, East Approach Drive). The house was first advertised as Marston Villa by the builder Charles Winstone, of Sherborne Terrace, Cheltenham, rather than by the first owner of the house. At the same time Winstone was also advertising next-door Malvern Hill Villa for sale or let. Marston is a common place and personal name with historical associations (battle site Marston Moor, playwright John Marston, etc.), and this may be the reason that the developer chose it. The name of Marston Road, just north of East Approach Drive off Albert Road, is more recent, and derives from the house name (see Hodsdon, Gazetteer).
Other names: Marston Lodge (name in use 1861 – 1915).

Melcombe House (name in use 1878 – 93; now 26 Albert Road). The name given to Melcombe Villa when Col. and Mrs. Robert Dillon moved into the house from Promenade Terrace, Cheltenham, in 1868. It lived on until around 1893, when incoming occupant Ann Ord changed it to Hawksworth.
Other names: Vista Villa (name in use 1861 – 6); Melcombe Villa (name in use 1867 – 78); Hawksworth (1894 to present).

Melcombe Villa (name in use 1867 – 78; now 26 Albert Road). Sometimes Melcomb Villa. The house name was changed from Vista Villa to Melcombe Villa when Mary Lucy Hanson, widow of the Rev. John Acton Hanson (formerly Vicar of Burghill, Herefordshire), moved in around 1867. The motivation for the name change is uncertain. It may be coincidental that an Independent minister, the Rev. Robert Stone Ashton, lived at Melcombe Villa in Melcombe Regis, Weymouth, Dorset in the mid 1860s. The name was changed again, to Melcombe House, in 1878.
Other names: Vista Villa (name in use 1861 – 6); Melcombe House (name in use 1878 – 93); Hawksworth (1894 to present).

Merridale (name in use 1938 – 45+; now 8 Pittville Lawn). Also Merridale House (1938 – 45+). This was the name that Mary Wisner Mandeville (née Dyott) gave to the house formerly known as Lothian Villa, at 8 Pittville Lawn, when she moved in around 1929. Her husband Pierce had been killed in 1916 at the Somme, at a time when his home address was No 4 Merridale Road, Wolverhampton. His widow remembered their life in Wolverhampton through the road name she conferred on her Pittville house.
Other names: Lothian Villa (name in use 1855 – 1928).

Montagu Villa (name in use 1849 – 1950+; now 6 Pittville Lawn). Also Montague Villa. The house was named by the first occupant Richard James Cuthbert Dunn R.N., who moved in with his household during 1849. It was not unusual for houses to be given names borrowed from the aristocracy, but in this case the link appears to be more specific. Montagu Villa was the original name of Buccleuch House, Richmond, Surrey, built by George, Duke of Montagu in the 18^th century and inherited by his son-in-law the Duke of Buccleuch in 1790 (it was demolished in 1938). There was clearly an association between the Dunn family and the Dukes of Buccleuch, as Nicholas Dunn’s son was named Montagu Buccleuch Dunn (born 1820). Later occupants sometimes respelt the name of the house as Montague Villa. NB Cheltenham also contained a Montague Place (now 3-11 London Road) from the late 1820s, and a Montague Cottage, Portland Place from the 1830s.

Morcote (name in use 1934 to present; now Morcote (Villa), 26 Wellington Road: original house demolished). There have been two houses named Morcote on the same plot in Pittville since the 1930s. Both were built in the former grounds of Lisle House, on the section of Clarence Square which links with Wellington Square. The first Morcote was built in the mid-1930s, the right-hand part of two semi-detached dwellings (adjoining its neighbour Parkways), facing west. The land was apparently owned by John Jackson, of 38 Clarence Square, and the first occupants were Harry Frederick Price, later an insurance agent, and his wife Joan. The most likely source of the name is the picturesque village of Morcote (pronounced with three syllables) at the southern end of Lake Lugano in Switzerland, just north of the Italian border. Morcote is a rare English house name, but its popularity was on the rise in the 1920s and 1930s, when Switzerland had become a popular destination for middle-class English households taking their summer holiday. By 1936 there was also a Morcote in nearby Hales Road. This speculation is supported by the fact that Harry Price’s father was a jeweller and his mother’s father was a watchmaker (as was his neighbour William Richards in adjoining Parkways): both are occupations which might make Switzerland an attractive holiday destination. Other options are far less likely: Morcote is a historical variant spelling of the names of English villages later called Murcott, though in these cases there is no evidence of continuity. The original semi-detached pair of Morcote and Parkways have been demolished. The more recent Morcote was built on the same plot, but in the northern section, facing Wellington Road, and it retains the earlier name.

Moultondale (name in use 1881 – 1950+; now Kingswood House, Pittville Circus Road). Moultondale was the name given to this house by its first resident, “landowner” Henry William Clark, when he moved in with his wife Elizabeth and their children in 1881. Although Elizabeth Clark came from Gloucester, her husband Henry was born in Whaplode Marsh, near Spalding, Lincolnshire, the son of an “opulent” farmer and grazier, also called Henry, whose family came from the next-door parish of Moulton. The family’s home village is commemorated by Henry William Clark by the name Moultondale.

Mount Sorrell (name in use 1931 – 48; now Richmond, West Approach Drive). Kathleen Hamilton Martin bought the house now called Richmond and in 1931 renamed it Mount Sorrell. Her family came from around Leicester, and since 1848 the Martins had run Mountsorrel Granite Quarry at Mount Sorrell (also Mount Sorrel, and now usually Mountsorrel), several miles to the south-east of Loughborough. Her brother Charles Hamilton Martin was the Chairman and Managing Director at the time his sister moved to Pittville. She named her house after the area of Leicestershire which had most influenced her family fortunes over the previous century. The Quarry remained in the family under it was sold to Redlands in 1960.
Other names: Bexley (name in use 1887 – 1917); Claremont (name in use 1907 – 19); Highbury (name in use 1913 – 15).

Napier House (name in use 1850 – 1950+; now 4 Pittville Lawn). It is likely that the name of Napier House derives from that of General Sir Charles James Napier GCB (1782-1853). Napier was a national hero after his successful Indian campaign in Sindh (1842-3), after which he was regularly referred to as “the conqueror of Scinde” and “the hero of Meeanee” (Miani). He developed a close connection with Cheltenham, and in September 1848 took a house for six months in the town, where he and Lady Napier were feted at dinners and other social events. When he left Cheltenham in March 1849 Wellington appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army in the Bombay Presidency.

Navarre (name in use 1911 – 19; now 50 Clarence Square). This short-lived name was introduced when retired Worcester banker Frederick Robert Laurie (68) moved into the house with his 26-year-old second wife of two years, Jane (née Nevette). Navarre is a name for a region of modern northern Spain, and also for the historical kingdom which stretched over parts of southern France (including Pau) and northern Spain. The kingdom is best known from the nicknames of its rulers, such as the French king Henry of Navarre (Henri IV), celebrated in popular literature. But no convincing reason can currently be given for the choice of this house name (guesswork would include favourite holiday destinations and historical characters), which seems to have reverted to plain No 50 Clarence Square after the departure of the Lauries.

Needwood House (name in use 1891 – 1950+; now 46 Clarence Square). The house name Needwood House was introduced to Pittville in 1891, when Elizabeth Webb moved in from Derbyshire, with her cousin Anne James. The Webbs were a Staffordshire family, and the house name commemorates the childhood home of Elizabeth Webb’s recently deceased husband, physician and surgeon William Webb, born in Barton-under-Needwood just south of Needwood in Staffordshire, who had died in Wirksworth, Derbyshire in late 1890.

Nightingale House (name in use 1917-19; now Priors Lodge, Pittville Circus). Nightingale House was the name given in 1917 to what was then known as Ash Priors, when the house was used as overnight accommodation for sisters and other nursing staff at the Gloucester Road St John Volunteer Aid Detachment (VAD) hospital. The new name therefore derives from the name of Florence Nightingale, the “Lady of the Lamp” (telegrams to Cheltenham’s Emergency Committee of the Red Cross, which coordinated the placement of incoming wounded, were already addressed to “Nightingale, Cheltenham”: see Neela Mann’s Cheltenham in the Great War (2016). St John Ambulance drivers would ferry the nursing staff to and from Nightingale House in Pittville before and after shifts at Gloucester Road. Major-General Henry Shewell, a veteran of British India, and his wife had brought up their family at Ash Priors since the mid 1880s. After the Major-General died in 1910, his second son, Major Percy Shewell, had become the Chief Superintendent of the Cheltenham Corps of the St John Ambulance. Percy died in 1915, but his wife remained a “Lady of Grace” of the Order of the Priory of St John. It seems that in 1917 Major-General Shewell’s elderly widow offered her house for the remainder of the war to the voluntary organisation to which her family had already given so much. Mrs Henry Shewell died in 1919, and, with the war over, the house was put on the market and resumed its old name of Ash Priors. (By 1937 Ash Priors was a nursing home, and in 1950 planning permission was requested to convert it again to a nurses’ home.)
Other names: Kyrle Villa (name in use 1849 – 69); Phayrecote (name in use 1867 – 83); Ash Priors (name in use 1883 – 1950+).

North Cottage (name in use 1841 – 86; now 17 Northfield Passage). The “cottage” is named in the 1855-7 Cheltenham Old Town survey, and faces the most northerly corner of the open ground running down from Northfield Passage to modern St Margaret’s Road. It was multi-occupied at the time of the 1841 census, by seventy-year-old servant Thomas Holloway, aged 70, and Frances Holloway (40), and several other small households. The house (named for its topography) is sometimes known by its number in the later censuses in the nineteenth century, and by 1901 as Northfield Cottage. It should not be confused with North House in nearby North Place.
Other names: Northfield Cottage (name in use 1901 – 45+).

Northerwood (name in use 1903 – 1946+; now Fairhavens Court, Pittville Circus Road). For many years this had been Balgowan House, but when the Misses Newbold arrived there in 1903 they immediately changed its name to Northerwood. The Newbold sisters had been living with their widowed mother in Oxford Parade, Cheltenham for twenty years, so knew the town well. When their mother died in 1902 they decided to move to Pittville. The sisters had been brought up in Lyndhurst, Hampshire. They called their new house after Northerwood House, a Georgian mansion (now Grade 2-listed) in Emery Down, which overlooks Lyndhurst, and would have been fiercely evocative of their childhood.
Other names: Balgowan Lodge (name in use 1859 – 60); Balgowan House (name in use 1859 – 1902).

Northfield Cottage (name in use 1901 – 45+; now 17 Northfield Passage). The name given to 17 Northfield Passage from around 1901, when the occupants were labourer Charles Ford and his family. Northfield Cottage is named after Northfield Passage, and should not be confused with the same name used of a house on nearby North Place in the nineteenth century.
Other names: North Cottage (name in use 1841 – 86).

North Hall (name in use 1923 to present day; now North Hall, Pittville Circus Road). When Kenneth Smily Bowman, formerly an accountant on the staff of a newspaper, and his wife Kate Treleaven Bowman moved into their house in Pittville Circus Road in 1923 it was called Kirkella. They immediately changed the name to North Hall. The big houses in Pittville Circus Road qualify for the epithet Hall (this house had previously been known as Berkeley Hall), but there is no particular reason why the house should be singled out as being North, other than the general notion that Pittville lies north of the centre of Cheltenham. There must be another reason for the choice of this name. In all probability the name was chosen because it reminded Kate Treleaven Bowman (née Cory) of her childhood in Cornwall. She had been a promising pianist at school in the 1890s, at the Launceston Girls’ High School, which seems to have shared some facilities with Dunheved College in Launceston. The Girls’ department of Dunheved School was called North Hall (apparently on the site of today’s North Hall Court in Dunheved Road, Launceston). By the 1890s North Hall, Launceston was a school in its own right, particularly strong in Music. Kate Bowman’s mother was a Geake: several Geakes attended Dunheved College and North Hall School in the 1880s and 1890s, and the Treleavens were also involved with education in Launceston. There seems little doubt that the Launceston school is the source of this Pittville house name, drawing on memories of the schooldays of Kate Treleaven Bowman and of her parents’ families.
Other names: Berkeley Hall (name in use 1867 – 1926); Kirkella (name in use 1901 – 39).

North Hall Cottage (name in use 1925 – 42; grounds of North Hall, Pittville Circus Road). The name presumably relates to the buildings at the rear of the back garden of North Hall, shown on early maps. As living accommodation, these were unofficially and variously named in censuses (after earlier names for the main house) Berkeley Hall Stables, Berkeley Hall Rooms, (Kirkella) Rooms over Stables, and Kirkella Stables. In 1924 James and Ada Matilda Pettit moved in, and, in keeping with the tendency in Pittville in the early years of the twentieth century, upgraded the epithet describing their accommodation from Stables to Cottage.

Northlands (name in use 1846 – 1950+; now Northlands Apartments, Pittville Circus). Also The Northlands (1859 – 1912). Northlands is a name sometimes applied to a region in the northern part of a village, town, etc. Although Northlands is to the north of central Cheltenham, there seems to have been no historical precedent for naming this area Northlands, so the reason behind the name is at present unknown. The first occupants were the Misses Leyson, cousins of Baron Sudeley of Toddington, and frequent visitors to Toddington. Their cousin Frances Hanbury Tracy died at the house in December 1867, two months after the surviving Miss Leyson, Ellen Anne Leyson, died while on a visit to Geneva.

Northumberland Villa (name in use 1841 only: now 19 Pittville Lawn). The name Northumberland Villa was present on the original sale advertisement for the house in February 1841 (Cheltenham Chronicle), and so probably evoked the title (and lifestyle) of the Dukes of Northumberland. In the following year the name of the house was changed to 1 Berkeley Villas.

Novar Lodge (name in use 1834 – 1925, from 1924 – 45+ as Novar; now 36 Evesham Road). The house was built and named by Lieutenant-Colonel (subsequently Major-General) William Munro of the Madras Army (East India Company) (c1779 – 1841), a more or less distant relation to General Sir Hector Munro, 8th laird of Novar in Ross-shire (1726-1805) and ninth Commander-in-Chief of India (1764–65). The precise relationship is currently uncertain, but it seems that William Munro was recommended by Hector Munro for a commission in his own regiment, the 42nd Royal Highlanders, in 1802. After Amelia Laura Fergusson moved in during 1924, she shortened the house name to Novar.

Oakbank (name in use 1886 to present; Pittville Circus Road). Also Oak Bank (1881 – 1950+). Major Valentine Birch (Bombay Army, retired) moved into Oakbank around 1881 with his wife Jane, their three children, and Jane’s sister. Oakbank was set back from Pittville Circus Road, and its name invites comparison with 1 and 2 Fernbank further along. But Oakbank was a reminder to Valentine Birch of earlier family glories. His maternal great-grandmother was John Kingston MP of Oak Hill, East Barnet, Hertfordshire (1736–1820). John Kingston had bought the Oak Hill estate in 1790, and sold it on in 1808, but fond memories of it had clearly been passed down to Major Valentine Birch in Pittville. Perhaps it helped him see beyond his own sad childhood: by 1851 he was in the care of the London Orphan Asylum in Hackney. The name of his son Valentine Kingston Birch also recalls the same branch of the family, and did his own name “Valentine”, a name shared with MP John Kingston’s father-in-law.

Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present; now Old lodge, Wellington Square). Henry Charles Owens and his wife Jessie Mabel retired to Cheltenham after living for many years in Kingston-upon-Thames. One of their first tasks, in 1941, was to change the quirky name of their new house, Flesk Lodge, to the more conventional Old Lodge, as it has remained ever since. Their new house was “old” in contrast to next-door Clive Lodge, which had just been converted to living accommodation. Later in 1941 the couple celebrated their golden wedding at Old Lodge.
Other names: Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939); Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7); Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43); Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67); Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881).

Outram Lodge (name in use 1942 to present; Outram Lodge, 90 Malden Road). The earliest reference to this name in Pittville dates from a furniture auction held there by Bayley’s in 1942. The occupants in 1946 were Brenda Brettel and Dorothy Alexandra Pleydell. The motivation for the name is uncertain. Almost all Outrams in street and house names relate to Sir James Outram, 1st Bart. (1803-63), remembered best for his part in the Siege of Lucknow, and although the Pleydells and many other nearby residents had military links with British India, it is not clear why the name was chosen. The other common instance of the name in the late nineteenth century was in the Henry Outram Lodge of the “Manchester Unity” of Oddfellows (Edward Harold Henry Outram, 1823-94, was Grand Master of the order and was perhaps a distant relative of Sir James Outram), but again no obvious link with this can yet be demonstrated.

Para (name in use 1909 – 16; now 5 Pittville Crescent). Mrs Geraldine Bourne had been living at 5 Pittville Crescent for ten years before she decided to rechristen her house Para.  This unusual name deserves some explanation, and this is only partly forthcoming. The Bournes were a well-travelled family: Geraldine Bourne’s late husband Walter had spent much his professional life with her as a doctor in Calcutta. They had also lived in north-western France for a while: two of her sons served aboard ship, in the Royal Navy; their son Walter Fitzgerald Bourne became a Major in the Indian Army; another son, Arthur, farmed in New Zealand, and one of their daughters was in 1909 about to marry an official in the New Zealand Department of Agriculture. Their lifestyle suggests one of two possible derivations for Para. Firstly, it may allude to the state (formerly also applied to the Brazilian city of Belém; Brazil nuts were once called “Para nuts”) of Pará in Brazil, or to the ship the Para, which until 1902 plied a route from Portuguese-speaking Para to Madeira, and on to Lisbon before arriving in England. Secondly, it may refer to the New Zealand fern, the para, which was known to horticulturalists at the time. The fact that the name Para was introduced to the house midway through the residency of the Bournes suggests that it marks a significant event in the history of the family: a memorable journey to South America, or some close contact with New Zealand. There is circumstantial evidence for both of these occurrences, but nothing specific. More modern associations with the Paratroop Regiment (the Paras) would be anachronistic, as this was not formed until 1940.

Parkgate: see Gundulf (name in use 1890-1901); Lorraine House (name in use 1902 – 63+).

Park House: see Dover House (name in use 1874 – 96); Inver (name in use 1897 – 1910), Beckaford House (name in use 1913 – 90+).

Park View (name in use 1920 to present; now Parkview, 4 Pittville Crescent). This name, which has co-existed with the house number, was introduced by Helena Beatrice Harvey, widow of Robert Withycombe Harvey, when she moved into the house after the First World War, in 1920. Before the war she had been living at Drummond House, 6 Pittville Crescent, and before that with her husband at St Clair, the Park, in southern Cheltenham. The name, like Lake View elsewhere in Pittville, is descriptive, the “park” being either Pittville Park (in which case it is almost aspirational, as only parts of the park can be viewed directly from the house) or the crescent of parkland in the Crescent. The name apparently did not survive the departure of the first residents in 1924, but was later revived.

Parkways (name in use 1936 – 49; house now demolished; in grounds of Lisle House, Clarence Square). Parkways was built around 1934 in the former grounds of Lisle House, on the section of Clarence Square which links with Wellington Square; it was the left-hand side of a semi-detached pair (with Morcote). The house name is likely to have at least two motivations: firstly, it was located generally on the way to Pittville Park; secondly, the word parkway (“a broad arterial road planted with trees”: OED), though dating from the 1870s in North America, was gaining ground in Britain in the 1930s, especially following the spirit of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1932, along with the sense that bare ribbon development did not represent the most elegant form of town planning for places like Cheltenham. The name was probably introduced by the first occupants of the house, William Reginald Richards, a watchmaker from Bath, who worked at 20 Winchcombe Street, and his wife Isma. Other local instances of the house name include Parkway on nearby New Barn Lane, noted from 1936.

Pate’s Girls Grammar School (name in use for Albert Road site 1935 – 50+; now Pittville School, Albert Road). This was the house name given to the accommodation of the Headmistress Miss Muriel Jennings MA, who was living at the school (according to the 1939 National Survey) when it opened on the Albert Road site after its move from St Margaret’s Road for the Autumn term of 1939. The task of building the school had been contracted to A. C. Billings & Sons Ltd., and was still unfinished when term started. Worse than that, the school opened its doors just weeks into the Second World War, and girls from King Edward’s High School, Birmingham had been temporarily evacuated for safety to Cheltenham (the Cheltenham girls used the buildings in the morning, and the Birmingham girls in the afternoon, till dusk, and for two hours on Saturday mornings). See also Groundsman’s Cottage and School House (Cottage).

Pejoda (name in use 1934 – 54+; on the site of Selkirk Court, Pittville Circus). In the 1930s two adjacent houses, Belgrano and Pejoda, were built on vacant land between Pittville Circus and the main arm of Pittville Circus Road. Both seem to have Hispanic origins: Belgrano was named after a suburb in Buenos Aires where the residents once lived, and Pejodo might be (mistakenly) interpreted as a loose translation of the Portuguese phrase pejo da (= “caught from”, or “got it”). However, the solution to this puzzle is simpler. In 1934 Mr Harold Mark Avery and his wife Ida Margaret moved into their brand-new house with their three children. Harold ran a car dealership in Cheltenham, and sponsored local motor-car trial racing. His elder daughter Beatrice Peggy was a star motor-car trials contestant even at the tender age of seventeen. Their son John Charles Avery developed into a motorcycle scrambler in Gloucestershire and later in Oxfordshire, where his father (a Cheltenham Town Councillor) was to become High Sheriff. Their other daughter was called Ida Daphne Avery. The three children were known as Peggy, John, and Daphne, and taking the first two letters of each name gives Pejoda, the earliest example of this form of informal blended name to be found in Pittville.

Pengwern College (name in use 1901 – 40; now Pengwern, Pittville Circus Road). Also Pengwern (1901 – 1940). For the beginning of the academic year in 1901 Mary Pearson and his husband Reginald moved their new private school, Pengwern School, from Albion Street in Cheltenham to a new purpose-built establishment at the eastern end of Pittville Circus Road, and renamed it Pengwern College. The name was not their invention. Pengwern was already the name of the house in Albion Street when they moved in around 1899, and they adopted it for their school. The previous owners, chemist Matthew and his wife Cecilia Mansbridge had named it when they moved into the house from the chemist’s establishment where they had lived on the High Street. Pengwern was doubtless chosen to remind Matthew of his youth spent in his home town of St Asaph, Denbighshire, from where the road north led to the next village, Pengwern. When Reginald and Mary eventually moved out of Cheltenham to retire in Ilfracombe, Devon, they named their new house there Pengwern.

Pengwern College Annexe (name in use 1926 – 38; now Byron Court, Pittville Circus Road). Pengwern College (the Children’s Day Nursery of Berkhamstead School) opened its doors to pupils in Pittville Circus Road in 1901. In the mid 1920s it took over the house next-door (then called Sunnyside) as an Annexe to the College, and it was known, functionally, as Pengwern College Annexe from 1926 until the building was repurposed as part of the County Council’s Sunnyside Maternity Home by 1940, and the old name of Sunnyside was revived.
Other names: Sunnyside (name in use 1874 – 1950+).

Percy House (name in use 1845 to present; Wellington Square). The house, originally called Laurel Lodge East (see Laurel Lodge), was built as a semi-detached villa property by Eleanor and her daughter Eliza Wallace in the late 1820s. The name Percy House is first known from at least 1845, when clergyman and schoolmaster William Gilbart MA advertised that “the duties of his Establishment” would be resumed on Wednesday 6^th August. But the name appears to be linked with the Dukes of Northumberland (the Percy family), though perhaps more by loose association than anything stronger. The Wallace family in Pittville were born in Ireland but traditionally had family links in the north said to involve Sir William Wallace. Eleanor’s eldest son, William Wallace Legge (the “Legge” was taken from his maternal uncle when he inherited Malone House, Belfast), was married at Bamburgh Parish Church in 1838 to Eleanor Wilkie Forster. The Forsters had governed Bamburgh Castle from the twelfth century until the Jacobite uprising of 1715, and at the time of the wedding occupied Addlestone Hall, owned (“like most local property”) by the Duke of Northumberland (Don Chapman, Wearing the Trousers 2017). It seems likely that this and other family associations with Northumberland and Percy property lies behind the introduction of the name to Percy House.

Phayrecot (name in use 1867 – 83; now Priors Lodge, Pittville Circus). Robert Deane Chamberlain married Georgina Phayre in Cheltenham in 1858, several years after returning to England after a career which had spanned military service and then farming in Victoria, Australia. The family house in Pittville was originally called Kyrle Villa, but Robert Chamberlain soon changed it to Phayrecot, merging his wife’s family name with cot, a regional word for a small house or humble lodging (see Steeniecot). The Phayres were a distinguished family of colonial administrators and military officers whose ancestor, Robert Phayre, had been one of the signatories to the death warrant of King Charles I.
Other names: Kyrle Villa (name in use 1849 – 69); Nightingale House (name in use 1917 – 19); Ash Priors (name in use 1883 – 1950+).

Pinehurst (name in use 1913 – 50+; now 110 Evesham Road). This house was originally 2 Saxham Villas. When 1 Saxham Villas adopted the name Saxham in 1894, it might have been expected that 2 Saxham Villas would have followed suit directly. But No 2 does not seem to have become known as Pinehurst until around 1913, the year C. Haward applied for planning permission there for a new bathroom. Pinehurst is a conventional name for a house associated with pine trees, as indeed are evidenced at the property today, in the gardens adjoining Pittville Park (west side). The name continued in use in parallel with the new house-numbering system, which was introduced in Evesham Road in 1937.

Pittendynie (also Pittendyne; name in use 1910 – 29; now 1 Albert Road). Pittendynie (also spelt Pittendyne) is the name of an estate at Moneydie, 17 miles north-west of Perth. It was home to John Alexander Dewar, 1st Lord Forteviot and his wife Jane Gow, parents of James Gow Dewar, retired planter, who moved into his new Pittville house in Albert Road in 1909 and named it after his parents’ estate. In 1916 the Dewars left Pittendynie in Pittville for Stoneleigh on Parabola Road, Bays Hill. The name remained in use for the house until the late 1920s, when the current occupants reverted to calling it 1 Albert Road.
Other names: Torrington (name in use 1936).

Pittville Cottage (name in use 1833 – 1950+; now 2 Prestbury Road). A cottage (small property not large enough to be called a villa) located towards the southern extent of Pittville. The name appears first in the Cheltenham Annuaire of 1833 (in a regular section documenting visitors and other new arrivals to Cheltenham), though the house had already been built for six years or so by then; the original lot included the site of this property and that of 7 Pittville Lawn adjoining (Blake, Pittville). See also next-door Segrave Cottage.

Pittville Court (1) (name in use 1874 to present; (rebuilt) Albert Road). Conventional style of name for a grand house, first occupied by Robert James Farbridge and his family around 1874.

Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896; now St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). The house name occurs once in the Cheltenham Annuaire, presumably in error or abandoned when Pittville Court (1) was noted.
Other names: Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35).

Pittville Crescent Cottage (name in use 1901-41). A three-room cottage with stabling apparently located in the 1901 census between Drummond House, 6 Pittville Crescent, and 10 Pittville Crescent (Lorraine Villa), occupied in 1901 and 1911 by coachman John Haines and his wife Alice.

Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7; now St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). When Garden Reach was proving hard to sell or let, it was advertised under a neutral name which incorporated the name of the area (Pittville) and a sense of the building’s grandeur (Hall). This seemed to work, and in July 1879 the house had new occupants, as Benjamin Littlewood (JP and Deputy Lieutenant for Worcestershire and JP for Staffordshire) moved in with his wife Sarah and his family. Unfortunately the shadow cast over the house earlier had not lifted, and Benjamin Littlewood died with a month, aged 77. After another year or so his widow moved out to Holmdale in Pittville Circus. Pittville Hall then underwent another name change to Donore with its next occupants, the Despards. But this name did not outlast them, and when they moved on in 1894 the house again remained unoccupied for three years and its name reverted to the neutral Pittville Hall. Finally, in 1897, Leonard Wallich MA transferred his school at Burgess Hill in Sussex to the house in Pittville Circus Road, under the name Inholmes.
Other names: Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35).

Pittville House (name in use 1835 to present; Wellington Road). A simple, distinguished name for the signature house on the Pittville estate, set in at southern end of the walks and rides, looking up towards the Pump Room. The house was bought in 1827 by Juliana Charlotte Wade for her return from India, let out for several years (in winter 1840 to Cheltenham MP Hon. Craven Berkeley and his wife: see Berkeley Court), and was eventually home to Juliana Wade’s daughter and family, including Aeneas McDonell and his son William Fraser, awarded the Victoria Cross in 1857 during the Indian Mutiny. Around 1831 there had been a short-lived and unrelated clothing establishment named Pittville House on High Street, Cheltenham, opposite Pittville Street.

Pittville Lawn Villa (name in use 1841 – 1904; now 39 Pittville Lawn). The house was probably named by the first owner Col. Michael White Lee and his wife Barrett, who bought the site in 1836 while they lived elsewhere in Pittville, at Maisonette (59 Portland Street). The simple, grand name suggests the status conferred by its position, towards the centre of the middle section of Pittville Lawn, overlooking the Walks and Rides.
Other names: Pittville Lodge (name in use 1907 – 50+).

Pittville Lodge (name in use 1907 – 50+; now 39 Pittville Lawn). The house was formerly called Pittville Lawn Villa, but this was changed to the less flamboyant Pittville Lodge on the arrival of new occupant Clara Mary Turner in 1907. The term Villa was gradually losing favour in Pittville, and people were tending to prefer the ancient solidity of Lodge, if their house didn’t qualify as a Hall. Curiously, there earlier instances of Pittville Lodges outside Pittville before there was one on the estate: in one case Pittville resident the Revd. Gordon Calthrop, former Minister of Trinity Church, moved to Highbury, where he commemorated the location of his old home by naming his new house Pittville Lodge around 1870; an earlier case, Pittville Lodge, Pitt Street, Portobello, Edinburgh, in 1852, perhaps owes more to its street name.
Other names: Pittville Lawn Villa (name in use 1841 – 1904).

Pittville Lodge Cottage (name in use 1924 – 45+; 39 Malden Road). There was a structure marked at this location, in the back garden of Pittville Lawn Villa, on the Cheltenham Old Town Survey of 1855-7, but it seems that it was not occupied until 1924. As Pittville Lawn Villa had by this time become Pittville Lodge, it is not surprising that this stable or outhouse block, on the service road to the rear, became known as Pittville Lodge Cottage, it being the fashion then to name former inhabited outbuildings Cottages.

Pittville Mansion (name in use 1833 – 1906; now Ellenborough House, Clarence Road). The plot or house was sold in 1831 to Thomas Fox and Anne Coleman (Blake, Pittville). The name Pittville Mansion was used when the house was advertised for sale or let in 1833, and interested parties were invited to contact the builder, Thomas Haines, of Berkeley Lodge. The name, of a conventional type designating a grand house in Pittville, was probably chosen by the owners.
Other names: Farnah (name in use 1873 – 1950+); White House (name in use 1914 – 46).

Pittville Nursing Home (name in use 1939 – 49+; now St Catherine’s, 21 Pittville Lawn). The functionally named Pittville Nursing Home, Segrave Place, was acquired by its Matron, Amy Elizabeth Roberts, in 1938 and opened soon afterwards for the nursing of the sick, elderly, and expectant mothers. At the time of the 1939 National Survey it housed the Matron and her Nurse Assistant, as well as a housekeeper and domestic servant, and four female and one male patients (all in the style of the Register listed as “incapacitated”).
Other names: Berkeley Villa (name in use 1841 – 2, 1861).

Pittville Pump Room (name in use 1825 to present; also called Pittville Spa). The original “pump room” was a shelter erected for people who had come to bathe and take the waters at the King’s Bath at Bath in the early eighteenth century. By the time that the Pittville Pump Room was built, pump room had come to mean both the room in which the water-pump was housed, and also the whole building containing the pump room. Pittville’s Pump Room was occupied by the lessee’s family from the 1830s at least into the 1850s: see Pittville Spa.

Pittville Spa (name in use 1825 to present; now more often Pittville Pump Room). Pittville Spa is a toponymic descriptive name dating from the earliest years of planning for a spa at Pittville. It is modelled on other spa names in Cheltenham and elsewhere, such as Cheltenham’s Cambray Spa (1811 onwards), Alstone Spa (1812), Montpellier Spa (1817), and Sherborne Spa (also 1817). The name Spa derives from the name of the health resort of Spa, near Liège in Belgium, long popular with British and continental tourists. The Pittville Spa was home to the families of Henry Seymour, the first lessee of the Pump Room from 1830 until 1841, and of his successor Charles Wickes.

Portland Cottage (name in use 1853 – 77; now 35 Prestbury Road). The furniture in the house, formerly 2 Portland Terrace, was advertised for sale by auction in 1853, on the death of livery-stables keeper Robert Langbridge (“Newman and Langbridge”, in Winchcombe Street). In the advertisement the house was named as Portland Cottage, suggesting that Langbridge had previously lived there under that name (though this is not evident from other sources). “All the Cheltenham Portlands probably commemorate Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, twice Prime Minister (1783 and 1807-9), who died 1809”, of which the earliest are an old Portland Place (south off High Street) and Portland House in Albion Street (Hodsdon, Gazetteer). The name Portland Cottage was quite short-lived, and the house was known again as 2 Portland Terrace by the late 1870s. A set of six Portland Cottages existed in Portland Square from around 1917, but these are unrelated.

Prestbury Villa (name in use 1869 – 1932; now Carlton House, Pittville Circus Road). Architect and builder Richard Davis gave his new house the name Prestbury Villa when he moved in with his wife Mary during 1869. Davis was from a family of Prestbury builders, and the name doubtless reminded him of his old home, and reminded his clients that he was associated with the long-standing Prestbury builders. When he moved, he rented out his former Prestbury home, Tatchley Cottage, as a furnished let. He and his wife lived in the house until the early 1890s: Mary Davis died there in 1890 and Richard, “late of Prestbury Villa”, died in 1893. The name continued until the 1930s.
Other names: Carlton (name in use 1926 – 50+), Carlton House (name in use 1937 to present).

Prestwich Lodge (name in use 1858 – 1963+; now Star Court, Pittville Circus Road). William Gardner JP was born in Pendelton, Manchester in the early 1820s. In 1849 he married Louise Armitage in Cheltenham, and the couple moved in to live with her parents at Farnley Lodge, Vittoria Walk. William was independently wealthy, and became heavily involved in philanthropic activities in his adopted town of Cheltenham, notably serving as Honorary Secretary to the Female Orphan Asylum in Winchcombe Street for many years. The Gardners transferred to the newly built Prestwich Lodge in Pittville in 1858, and William lived there into the early years of the twentieth century. Whereas the “Lodge” element of his house name perhaps derives from Farnley Lodge, Prestwich dates back to his Manchester days. Prestwich is a northern suburb of Manchester, several miles from William Gardner’s birthplace to the west of the city. But William owned property in Prestwich, and in particular he owned nine acres of unspoilt land on Prestwich Clough, described by the Manchester Courier in 1906 as “one of the few remaining bits of natural beauty near Manchester city” (14 May). Shortly before his death, the philanthropic William Gardner made a gift of his nine acres of land on Prestwich Clough to Manchester Urban District Council and, together with additional land acquired by the Council, the Clough was opened to the public in perpetuity. In recognition of his benevolence, Manchester Council named the road passing across the north of the Clough Gardner Road.

Primrose Lawn (name in use 1833 – 87; now Devonshire House, Wellington Road). Primrose Lawn was bought by Captain William Broughton R.N., and occupied by him and his family from at least 1833, when the Cheltenham Looker-On noted that Eliza Broughton held a fashionable “dinner and evening party” (31 August). The name recalls Captain Broughton’s first command, the 18-gun sloop-of-war HMS Primrose, which he commanded from 1830. Captain Broughton had good reason to be grateful for his time aboard the Primrose. The ship formed part of a Royal Naval force conducting an anti-slavery blockade of the African coast. On 7 September 1830 the Primrose encountered the 20-gun Cuban slave ship the Veloz Passagera and its cargo of 556 slaves. Broughton’s crew boarded the Cuban ship and gallantly crushed the resistance, losing only three men to the slaver’s forty-three. After the action Broughton was promoted to Post-Captain (captain in official rank and not just by command or courtesy). Though he died in 1849, his wife and family retained Primrose Lawn for many years.
Other names: Halsey House (name in use 1873 – 1950+).

Priors Lodge: see Ash Priors (name in use 1883 – 1950+); Kyrle Villa (name in use 1849 – 69); Nightingale House (name in use 1917 – 19); Phayrecot (name in use 1867 – 83).

Queensholme (name in use 1867 to present; now Queensholme, Pittville Circus Road). Also Queen’s Holme (1866 – 1942). Margaret Block (née Orr) moved to Queensholme shortly after the death of her husband, London merchant Samuel Richard Block of Greenhill Grove, Chipping Barnet, Hertfordshire.  Although several Pittville houses later made use of the element holm(e) (Cedar Holme, Eastholme, Edenholme, and others), Queensholme seems to have been the first to do so. The name Queensholme was occasionally used elsewhere by the mid 1860s (particularly an estate called Queen’s Holme at Willingham near Cambridge), but no association has yet been found between the Pittville house and any of these, nor with Kingsholm in Gloucester. The large Holm Oak to the rear of the house will have been well established when the house was built in the 1860s, and so is likely to have been a significant factor in the choice of the -holme element. Margaret Block was born Margaret Orr, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the daughter of Scottish Ceylon Civil Servant William Orr; two of her brothers went into military service, with the eldest, William Adam Orr, serving as Aide-de-Camp to Queen Victoria at the time of his sister’s move to Queensholme. Margaret was close to her eldest brother, providing a touching memorial from a “sorrowing sister” at St Cyrus’s church in southern Aberdeenshire when he died in 1869. It is possible that her family’s tradition of loyal service to the Crown induced Margaret Block to match Queen with the conventional house-name element holme when she named her new house in 1866, but this is unproven.

Rahere (name in use 1898 – 1950+; now 2 Pittville Lawn). No 2 Pittville Lawn had been known as Segrave House since it was built in the 1830s at the southern entrance to Pittville from Cheltenham. But about 1898 Dr Henry Cripps Lawrence moved to Pittville with his wife Mary and daughter Honoria, and began to practise at his new house on Pittville Lawn, which he renamed Rahere. Born in India, Lawrence trained as a doctor in London. at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital. St Bartholomew’s Hospital dates its origins to an Anglo-Norman priest and monk named Rahere, a favourite of Henry I, who founded the Priory of the Hospital of St Bartholomew’s in 1123. Lawrence named his house after the Anglo-Norman monk who was the traditional founder of the hospital at which he received his first training in medicine. See also Gundulf.
Other names: Segrave House (name in use 1837 – 1950+).

Rathlin (name in use 1935 to present; now Rathlin, Pittville Circus). The house’s name changed from Sinclair (Villa) to Rathlin with the arrival of the Stewart family in 1935. Frank Stewart had been a war artist, covering the Boer War for London periodicals such as the Lady’s Pictorial and the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, and had latterly been making a living from his foxhunting sketches (he was a keen foxhunter). He and his (second) wife Muriel and daughter Esmé moved to Pittville after at least nine years in Donnington, north of Newbury, and they brought their Donnington house name Rathlin with them. The house name is likely to be related to Rathlin Island, off the north-east coast of Northern Ireland, ten kilometres from Ballycastle en route for the Mull of Kintyre. It may have been introduced in Donnington by the Stewarts, as Mrs Stewart, born Muriel Winifred Hamilton, was born in Belfast, and Rathlin Island was a local attraction on day trips along the Antrim coast. In 1941 the Stewarts moved to Southern House in nearby Albert Road, where Frank died in 1945. His wife returned to Northern Ireland, where she died in 1961.
Other names: Sinclair Villa (name in use 1845 – 1933).

Ravenhurst (name in use 1894 to present; 93 Pittville Lawn). At first the two grand semi-detached houses that are now 91 and 93 Pittville Lawn were for many years named 1 and 2 Essex Villas respectively. In 1882 No 91 changed its name to the more enticing Lake View, and when William Jones FRS and his family moved out of No 93 in late 1890 to Marston House (now St Ives’ Court) on East Approach Drive, the house was rather surprisingly advertised for sale as Ravenhurst (formerly “Essex Villa”, although supporting evidence is lacking for this assertion). The motivation for the name Ravenhurst is uncertain, though the existence of a Ravenhurst Farm/Lodge at Minety, Wiltshire may be relevant: Joseph Pitt, who was  MP for Cricklade and had estates in Wiltshire, had purchased the manor of Minety in 1791 for £20,000 as another of his speculative investments. Alternative, the change of name to the descriptive Lake View was perhaps felt to have been successful in attracting sales and lettings, leading the owner of the remaining Essex Villa to follow suit. Coincidentally, William Jones died in 1904, having moved with his family back to Devon, in a house at East Cliff, Dawlish named Ermenhurst (called after an earlier resident, Godfrey Ermen). See also Deerhurst.

Regency Lodge (name in use 1938 to present; now Regency Lodge, 69 Pittville Lawn). When James Herbert Edward Lane arrived at 69 Pittville Lawn with his wife Elizabeth in 1938, one of his first actions was to change his rather impenetrable house name from Llyndda to the more straightforward Regency Lodge. For most of its life up to that point the house had been called Heathfield Lodge, and so Lane revived the Lodge, and preceded it by Regency, a word redolent of Cheltenham’s early spa days. The name for this house preceded the use of Regency Lodge for a new Cheltenham Freemasons’ lodge in 1946.
Other names: Heathfield Lodge (name in use 1841 – 1950+); Llyndda (name in use 1923 – 37); Upnor (1) (name in use 1916 – 25).

Retreat (name in use 1916 – 19; now 8 Clarence Road). This conventional name for a place of seclusion, in retirement for religious contemplation, was chosen for his house in Clarence Road when Archibald William Gordon Graham returned around 1915 from his career as a tea planter in India (latterly in Sri Lanka/Ceylon) to retire in Cheltenham with his wife Janet. As well as being a tea planter, while in India he had also been a Volunteer with the London Scottish regiments (equivalent to a modern Territorial), and held the title Colonel. Although several roads in Cheltenham already had the name “Retreat” (more prominent ones include Montpellier Retreat and Queen’s Retreat), it was quite unusual as a house name, though the Cheltenham Annuaire notes one on Tewkesbury Road in the 1870s. After spending the war years at the Retreat in Clarence Road, the Grahams moved round the corner in 1920 to Wellesley Court (now the Clarence Court Hotel), in Clarence Square.

Richmond: see Bexley (name in use 1887 – 1917), Claremont (name in use 1907 – 19).

Roden House (name in use 1836 – 2018; now 23 Pittville Lawn). Roden House was designed by Pittville architect Robert Stokes, who bought the plot in 1833. The name “Roden” was best known to contemporaries as the title of an Anglo-Irish peer: Robert Jocelyn, 3^rd Earl of Roden (1788-1870), was an active member of the House of Lords, and his ancestors took their title from High Roding in Tipperary. However, the name is also shared with the village (and river) of Roden near Wem in Shropshire, and with a river at Compton in Berkshire. All three had houses named after them, and no particular association has been discovered between any of these and Robert Stokes or the first inhabitant of the house, Captain George Schreiber, a veteran of Waterloo. It is perhaps significant that Roden House, in Compton, Berkshire, was originally known as Stokes Manor.

Rosehaugh Villa (names in use 1844 – 85; now East Eglinton/West House, Pittville Circus). Also Rosehaugh (1852 – 87). The name Rosehaugh derives from the name of the Rosehaugh estate formally owned by members of the Mackenzie clan north of Inverness in Ross and Cromarty. Haugh is a Scots word for level land along the banks a river. In the 1790s Sir Roderick Mackenzie built Rosehaugh House on the Rosehaugh estate (the building was eventually demolished in 1959). Lt.-Col. John Clunes (12^th Regiment of the Bombay Native Infantry, retired, and a writer on Indian matters) moved into the Pittville house with his family soon after it was built, in 1844. The name Rosehaugh was chosen, it seems, in memory of his mother, Margaret Mackenzie, who was distantly related to the Mackenzies of Rosebaugh, and who doubtless knew the estate from her youth. It is probably no coincidence that the last Mackenzie owner of the Scottish estate was called James John Randoll Mackenzie (1814-84), and one of the Clunes’ children was named John Randoll Mackenzie Clunes (b. 1843).
Other names: St Idloes (name in use 1887 – 96); Eglinton (name in use 1897 – 1934); see also Eglinton East (name in use 1937 to present), Eglinton West (name in use 1938 – 50+).

Ross House (name in use 1840 -1899; now Clarence Court Hotel, Clarence Square). The first owner of Ross House was Archer Swinburne (1806-41). He was from a Derbyshire family, but had attended Edinburgh University in the mid 1820s, before becoming a Member of the Medical Society of Edinburgh in the 1827-8 session. As neither he nor his family have any known association with Ross-on-Wye it is quite possible that the name Ross House commemorates his days in Edinburgh. In the mid eighteenth century Ross House in Edinburgh was the property of William Ross, 14th Lord Ross, who died in 1754 (when the title became extinct). The house was known for its gay parties under its new owner, but when Archer Swinburne was in Edinburgh it had become the Edinburgh General Lying-In Hospital, and was in the university and medical area of the city which Archer would have frequented as a student. The Edinburgh house was noted by Walter Scott, in his novel Redgauntlet (1824), where the hero states that "Ross House in our neighbourhood is nearly finished, and it is thought to exceed Duff House in ornature". Archer Swinburne's mother Ann moved from Winchcombe to Pittville in her last years, buying 9 Clarence Square (1838) and then living at 4 Wellington Villas (now Avondale House), before her death at Ross House in 1840. See a similar explanation at Drummond House.
Other names: Wellesley Court (name in use 1900 – 50+).

Rosslyn (name in use 1934 – 41; now 88 Evesham Road). The name Rosslyn was given to newly built 88 Evesham Road in 1934, when retired Prudential insurance officer Ernest Blanche Henry Edmonds moved in with his wife Letitia. Rosslyn was not uncommon as a house name  at the time: there was a Rosslyn in Moorend Park, and a row of Rosslyn Villas in Shurdington. Cheltenham residents had not in the past been averse to introducing the names and titles of members of the aristocracy into their houses, but the Edmonds family (from Stroud and Yorkshire) do not seem to have a family relationship with the Earls of Rosslyn, or their seat at Rosslyn Castle, Midlothian. At present the motivation behind the name is unknown.

Rothesay House (name in use 1848 – 1918; now Rothesay Mansion, 2 Albert Road). William Morris Findon, a Superintendent Surgeon who retired from the East India Company’s Medical Service in 1843, moved into the newly built Rothesay House with his wife soon after they returned to England. He was probably responsible for the house name, which commemorates the name of the principal town of the Isle of Bute, presumably by way of Charles Stuart, 1^st Baron Stuart de Rothesay. Charles Stuart was sometime British ambassador to France and Russia, who had died at his seat, Highcliffe Castle in Dorset, in 1845, shortly before Findon’s removal to Cheltenham. With Rothesay’s death the title became extinct, but it gave its name in the late 1840s to a cluster of elegant addresses, by the Thames in Fulham, in Coleraine, Cheltenham, and Bath. The Findon family came from Warwickshire, and no direct association with the Stuarts has been uncovered. William Findon’s niece Eliza Louisa and her new husband Thomas Sabin Harbidge recycled the name Rothesay in 1849 for the name of their new house in another spa town, Rothesay Villa, in Weston Road, Bath. Cheltenham’s Rothesay House was renamed Rothesay Mansion around 1918.
Other names: Rothesay Mansions (name in use 1918 – 50+).

Rothesay Mansions (name in use 1918 – 50+; now Rothesay Mansion, 2 Albert Road). In 1917 Rothesay House was in wartime use as a hospital for Belgian soldiers; before the First World War it had long been occupied by the James family. The building was no longer needed as a hospital from early 1917,and so in July it was put up for sale. With no takers, the sale was postponed and it was announced for auction in November, as a detached residence. Even then it failed to attract the reserve price, but was sold by private treaty. The new owners planned to diversify the accommodation, and in 1918 the property was advertised as “two self-contained [flats], with five rooms, bath and lav.”, by builders A. C. Billings & Sons (according to the 1911 census it had fourteen rooms). With the change of function to flats came a new name, and from 1918 the old Rothesay House was known as Rothesay Mansions and it was subsequently split up into at least five apartments. The change from Rothesay Mansions to the singular Rothesay Mansion postdates 1950s.
Other names: Rothesay House (name in use 1848 – 1918).

Rowanleigh (name in use 1878 – 1950+; now 17 Wellington Square). The name Rowanleigh is not recorded before 1878 (Rowanlea was quite common as a house name at the time, as was The Rowans). Captain W. Smith moved into 17 Wellington Square in 1873, and retained the old number until 1878, when the Cheltenham Annuaire records the name-change to Rowanleigh. Captain Smith remained in the house only for a further two years, as his lease expired in 1880 (Cheltenham Chronicle 8 June). The motivation for the name is not certain, but it may have been influenced by either or both of two factors. Firstly, the fact that the house next-door, No 18, changed its name several years earlier, in 1874, from Georgina Villa (also known at the time as 2 Wellington Square South) to Cedar Villa. Both names may have been influenced by planting regimes in Wellington Square (a nursery garden occupied the south-west corner). Secondly, and in relation to a house which was historically let for quite short periods and may have had an absentee landlord, it may be significant that a Miss Margaret Hicks visited 17 Wellington Square several years earlier from “Leigh Vicarage” (The Leigh, a village seven miles north-west of Cheltenham), on the same day as Mr Arthur Austin left 17 Wellington Square for Wales (Cheltenham Chronicle 4 September 1860). What is significant about this is that Arthur’s relation John Southgate Austin was vicar of The Leigh, living at the Vicarage or Parsonage, at the times of the censuses from 1861 until 1881.

Sandown House (name in use 1881; now 30 Albert Road). The name by which Sandown Lawn is recorded (only) in the 1871 census.
Other names: Sandown Lawn (name in use 1870 – 1950+).

Sandown Lawn (name in use 1870 – 1950+; now Park House, 30 Albert Road). The house name derives from the seaside town of Sandown, on the Isle of Wight. First residents Henry Osmore Newbery (a retired merchant, bapt. 1819) and his wife Julia were born in Manchester and Sheffield respectively, but they were married in late 1866 at the Register Office in Newport, Isle of Wight, inland from the resort of Sandown. The 1871 census shows servants caretaking at the house while the Newberys were away on the south coast again, this time at the Victoria and Albert Hotel in Torquay.
Other names: Sandown House (name in use 1881).

Saxham (name in use 1894 – 1948+; now 108 Evesham Road). The name Saxham was first used by Mrs Clara Parr and her brother Lieutenant-Colonel James Bridge (retired) when they moved into No 1 Saxham Villas in 1894, by abbreviating the original name. Saxham Villas had been named in 1846, when the first occupants moved into the two houses which made up the Villas. The villas themselves were so called after the village of Little Saxham, in Suffolk. The plot on which the two houses were built in the 1840s was one of those sold by the Pittville estate the year after the death of Joseph Pitt in 1842. The sale details appear In the Cheltenham Looker-On for 4 November 1843: “Lot 7. – A piece of building land, on the same road [Evesham Road], nearly opposite the Pittville bridge, - sold to Mr. Lingwood, for £300”. “Mr Lingwood” was Robert Sole Lingwood, Cheltenham solicitor (and later “Lord” of Cheltenham Manor), who had moved with his family to Cheltenham from Little Saxham in Suffolk about eight years earlier. The name of the house, and before that, of the pair of villas, commemorate Robert Lingwood’s Suffolk origins.

Saxony House (name in use 1897 – 1933; now 24 Prestbury Road). Saxony House was a private house in Leamington Place to which Edward Clee moved in 1897 to run his tailoring establishment. By then in his forties, Edward Clee had worked for at least twenty years as a tailor; his wife Mary was a dressmaker. The house name comes from the region of Saxony in the east of modern-day Germany. In the context of tailoring, it is likely that Clee chose the name with reference to the then-fashionable woollen fabric called Saxony used to make dresses, suits, scarves, and other garments. A fabric was made originally from the wool of merino sheep in Saxony: contemporary advertisements speak of “Saxonies, Harris Tweeds, Blarney Tweeds”, or “Fashionable Saxony and Cheviot Tweed Suitings”. From the 1870s Hill & Jones’s “trimming and fancy warehouse” in the Promenade had been known as Saxony House, though no connection is evident.

School House (Cottage) (name in use 1939 – 45+; now part of Pittville School, Albert Road). When Pate’s Grammar School for Girls moved from St Margaret’s Road to newly built premises on Albert Road for the Autumn term in 1939, the husband-and-wife caretaking team of Herbert and Marjorie Hayden, their son Raymond, and school porter Frank Twist lived on-site in School House Cottage, the functional name given for their accommodation in the official directories. It was one of two cottages at the school, which were sometimes referred to together as “School House Cottages”: see also Groundsman’s Cottage and Pate’s Girls Grammar School.

Scoriton (name in use 1910 to present; now Scoriton, 16 Pittville Crescent). Scoriton is the name of a small village in the south-west of Dartmoor; it is a hamlet within the parish of Buckfastleigh in Devon. No 16 Pittville Crescent was originally called Fern Lawn, but its name was changed to Scoriton on the arrival of Edmund Fearnley Tanner around 1909. Mr Fearnley Tanner had been a leading light on the parish council of West Buckfastleigh, in Devon, and he had been particularly involved with a scheme for supplying Scoriton with water, especially as this would water his fields nearby. When he moved to Pittville, he brought the name of the village with him as the name for his new house.
Other names: Fern Lawn (name in use 1875 – 1913).

Segrave Cottage (name in use 1836 – 1901; now 4 Prestbury Road). Next-door to Pittville Cottage (2 Prestbury Road), Segrave Cottage was named after Col. William Fitzhardinge Berkeley (1786-1857), from 1831 Lord Segrave (see further information at Berkeley Court and Segrave House). The Cheltenham Annuaire noted that the Chevalier G. Guerini moved into the house during 1836: he advertised himself as a Professor of the Italian and French languages. The original lot included the site of this property and that of 9 Pittville Lawn adjoining (Blake, Pittville)

Segrave House (name in use 1837 – 1950+; now 2 Pittville Lawn). Segrave House in Pittville was preceded in Cheltenham by a Segrave House and academy in The Park estate. These and other houses and streets in Cheltenham (including the houses constituting Segrave Place in Pittville, named in 1827 deeds) commemorate Col. William Fitzhardinge Berkeley (1786-1857), a leading light of Cheltenham society, who entered the House of Lords as Lord Segrave in 1831 (Hodsdon, Gazetteer). Pittville’s Segrave House was put on the Cheltenham map on 30 March 1837 when Capt. William Moore Beetlestone held a fashionable fancy-dress ball there, soon after moving into his new home. See also Berkeley Court, Berkeley House.
Other names: Rahere (name in use 1898 – 1950+).

Selkirk House (name in use 1847 to present; Selkirk House, 73 Prestbury Road). Selkirk House and the associated terrace running south from it were named in the mid 1840s after nearby Selkirk Villa on the north side of Pittville Circus. The first recorded occupant of Selkirk House was a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Pardoe, who remained in the house for two years before moving to Brighton, where she died in September 1849.

Selkirk Villa (name in use 1837 – 1917; on site of present Tresmere, Pittville Circus). The house was the first of several roads and houses in the area to incorporate the name Selkirk. It was advertised to be let, fully furnished, in 1811, under the name Selkirk Villa. The motivation for the name is uncertain, but was perhaps selected as a noble Scottish name intended to attract potential occupants.
Other names: Tresmere (name in use 1918 to present).

Shirley House (name in use 1862 – 1950+; now Askham Court, Pittville Circus Road). Askham Court had been known as Southam Lawn and Southam Villa in its early years. But when John Carroll Hele moved up with his wife Sarah, and their children from Devon in 1861 or 1862 he changed its name to Shirley House. The new name recognises the Heles’ association with the family of Rear Admiral Thomas Shirley, whom John Carroll Hele’s aunt Ann Hele had married in her home town of West Teignmouth in 1809. John Carroll Hele’s eldest son was christened Thomas Shirley Hele in the early 1830s, and sadly died “at his father’s residence, Shirley House”, in March 1862 (Cheltenham Chronicle, 18 March).
Other names: Southam Lawn (name in use 1851); Southam Villa (name in use 1861).

Sinclair Villa (name in use 1845 – 1933; now Rathlin, Pittville Circus). Also St Clair Villa (1846 – 78), Sinclair (1888 – 1916), St Clair (1881 – 1936). Built by Edward Cope as one of a semi-detached pair called Sinclair Villas (Hodsdon, Gazetteer), occupied in 1844 by the builder Edward Cope and by John Pearce, Gent. One became Stanbrook Villa, leaving the other to be known simply as Sinclair Villa, in the following year (still occupied by the Pearces). As the name originally appeared in the owner/builder’s Sinclair Villas, it was probably chosen as a suitable name to attract potential buyers, which might suggest general reference to the Scottish clan name and noble surname Sinclair. No specific association of the name Sinclair with either the house or villa pair has yet been determined.

Sligo House (name in use 1897 to present; Sligo House, 2 Wellington Road). In 1896 Irish surgeon Alexander Duke married Annie Davies, and the couple soon moved into their new home (previously called Tidmington House). Alexander Duke’s father was Alexander Duke Esq., of Newpark, Ballymote, County Sligo, and so in renaming his house Sligo House Alexander Duke was remembering his family homelands. The Duke family had been granted land in Sligo in the mid 17^th century, and by 1876 owned 5,000 acres in the county, including residences at Newpark, Branchfield, Kilcreevin, and Kilmorgan.
Other names: Alwington Villa (name in use 1844 – 95); Tidmington House (name in use 1889 – 95).

South Cleeve House (name in use 1848 – 1945; now 40 Evesham Road). Also Cleeve House, (1848), South Cleeve (1853). Originally the first house at the southern end of Cleeveland Parade, but the parade was not completed, and retired Naval officer Joseph Morton and his family renamed it initially as Cleeve House but soon after as South Cleeve House, perhaps for distinguish it from Cleeve House in Bishop’s Cleeve. The house stands on what was then known as Cleeve Road.

Southam Lawn (name in use 1851; now Askham Court, Pittville Circus Road). The name Southam Lawn is only recorded in the 1851 census, when Pittville builder Edward Billings was living there with his wife Mary and their six children. By 1859 the adjoining semi-detached property was advertised as 1 Southam Villas, and so Southam Lawn would by implication be known as 2 Southam Villas. By 1861 the patchy record shows that the present house was called Southam Villa (its adjoining house being now Gwernant Villa). Southam was a village two miles north-east of Pittville, and Southam House was then home to local notable Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough, formerly Governor-General of India.
Other names: Southam Villa (name in use 1861); Shirley House (name in use 1862 – 1950+).

Southam Villa (name in use 1861; now Askham Court, Pittville Circus Road). A later, short-lived name for Southam Lawn, replaced in 1862 by Shirley House. The house should not be confused with Southam Villa, formerly the home of Thomas Haines, builder, just further north on the Prestbury Road.
Other names: Southam Lawn (name in use 1851); Shirley House (name in use 1862 – 1950+).

Southend House (name in use 1846 to present; Southend House, 32 Prestbury Road). Also South End House (1845-70). John Gregory Welch (1775–1854) had built Arle House in Cheltenham and lived there in some splendour, but after a period of financial embarrassment he had to retrench, living for a while in the 1840s at Southend House in Pittville.  It was quite normal for a house on the southern end of a development to be called “South End House” (similarly “North End House”), and this would be an entirely appropriate name for a house at the southerly end of the spur of land where Prestbury Road meets Albert Road. But the primary motivation for the modern spelling Southend House comes from the fact that John Gregory Welch owned property in Southend in Essex as a result of his marriage to Frances White Asser in 1797. Documents at the Essex Record Office show John Gregory Welch leasing part of his holding in Southend, in the parish of Southchurch in 1806, and in the first half of the nineteenth century he regularly presided over a court baron in the Manor of Southchurch, while his eldest son presided over the parallel manorial court in the adjacent Manor of North Shoebury in Southend. Although it was fortuitous that the plot on which Southend House was built lay at the southern end of new development in Pittville, the name owes most to the property in Essex where the Welches could imagine themselves feudal overlords.

Southern House (name in use 1860 – 1950+; now 28 Albert Road). The precise motivation for the house name is unclear. Although Southern House is located towards the south east of the Pittville estate, it is not so distinctively southern (and was not when it was constructed) that this would be an obvious name for it. In 1870 it was re-advertised for let by Richard Davis, Pittville architect and builder originally from Prestbury, which suggests that he may have owned and named it. See Davis’s house name Prestbury Villa, in Pittville Circus Road.
Other names: Southern Villa (name in use 1861 – 4).

Southern Villa (name in use 1861 – 4; now 28 Albert Road). The name used for Southern House by the Cheltenham Annuaire for a short period in the early 1860s, after which it reverted to Southern House. The name Southern House was used in the 1861 census.
Other names: Southern House (name in use 1860 – 1950+).

Stanbrook House (name in use 1940 to present; now Stanbrook House, Pittville Circus). Also Stanbrooke House (1940 to present). The house was formally known as Stanbrook(e) Villa, or simply Stanbrook(e). Colonel Bernard Gauntlett Harrison appears to have changed the name to Stanbrook House in the final year of his residency, perhaps reasoning that prospective buyers might think that House had a more sturdy feel about it than Villa. It seemed to work, as the next occupant, Frank Scott Russell, sought to extend the property by building a new garage, for which he submitted a planning application as soon as he moved in.
Other names: Stanbrook Villa (name in use 1845 – 93).

Stanbrook Villa (name in use 1845 – 93; now Stanbrook House, Pittville Circus). Also Stanbrook (1885 – 1946). Stanbrook Villa was one of the houses in Pittville Circus built by Edward Cope, along with its semi-detached neighbour Sinclair (now Rathlin). In 1844 Harper’s Directory of Cheltenham calls both Sinclair Villas (Hodsdon, Gazetteer), but by the following year one of the pair had become Stanbrook Villa (and the other Sinclair Villa). The name Stanbrook Villa should probably be associated with the village of Stanbrook in southern Worcestershire, and perhaps particularly with Stanbrook Villa in the nearby village of Powick. The first residents of the Pittville house were William Henry Robeson and his family. William Robeson had recently retired from a solicitors’ practice in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and his father and brothers had run solicitors’ businesses in Bromsgrove and Droitwich for many years, and were landowners in the county. However, at present there is no documentary link between the Robesons and the village of Stanbrook.
Other names: Stanbrook House (name in use 1940 to present).

Stanley Lawn (name in use 1873 – 1911; (demolished) just south of Pittville Court, Albert Road). The first residents of the house were Commander Conrad Augustus Watts R.N., son of Vice-Admiral George Watts, and his wife Julia. The fact that Commander Watts had enjoyed a life at sea, had named his daughter Agnes Malvina (born 1867), and that the father of Julia Watts née Herring, Charles Herring, ran a mining concern in Brazil, might suggest that Stanley could relate to the Falkland Islands. However, Malvina had been briefly popular as a personal name after James McPherson’s notorious Ossian poems of the late 18^th century; Conrad Watts’s aunt (bapt. 1844) also had the middle name Malvina. Without further evidence it might be safer to associate Stanley was the national publicity surrounding journalist Henry Stanley’s African search for Dr Livingstone, whom he found in 1871, and with other nationalistic resonances from the titled surname Stanley.
Other names: Handley Cross (name in use 1873 – 1911).

Stanley Villa (name in use 1878 – 82; now Drummond House, 6 Pittville Crescent). Originally 6 Pittville Crescent, the short-lived house name was changed to Stanley Villa in 1878: it reverted to 6 Pittville Crescent in 1883. The motivation for the name-change is not certain. The Cheltenham Annuaire noted that the house was empty in 1877 and 1879, and so the name was perhaps intended to make the house more attractive to potential occupants: this may have been the case under similar circumstances earlier in the decade with Stanley Lawn, further along Albert Road (see Stanley Lawn).  Stanley Villa was a fashionable house name elsewhere in Britain (often based on the name of the titled Stanleys). The fact that there was already an older Stanley Villa in Lansdown, Cheltenham, may have been a factor in the reversion to the designation 6 Pittville Crescent.
Other names: Drummond House (name in use 1901 to present).

St Anne’s (name in use 1935 to present; St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). Also St Anne’s Church House (1935 – 50+),  St Anne’s Diocesan (Retreat) House (1936 – 50+), and St Anne’s House (1935 – 50+). When St Anne’s Nursery College left the house in 1935, the lease was acquired, initially for five years, by the Gloucester Diocesan Board. They reduced the longer name simply to St Anne’s, and planned to use it for retreats, conferences, and other gatherings, initially under the management of the Lady Warden, Mrs King, and catering for up to thirty people overnight. The property was bought by the diocese in 1948, modernised in 1962 (for £15,000), and finally closed on 31 December 1970. It is now rented out privately, under the name St Anne’s.
Other names: Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35).

St Anne’s Nursery (College) (1) (name in use 1909 – 12; now Burston House, Pittville Circus). St Anne’s Church of England Nursery College had been established in 1900, as the nursery department of the “Dames of the Household” organisation created by Mrs Nixon, of Tivoli, Cheltenham, and supported by Miss Beale and others. The “Dames” movement attempted to address the “servant problem”, by encouraging women to enter service; the organisation suggested that female servants should be retitled “Dames” of their speciality, so a household cook would be a “Cooking Dame”, a general servant would be a “General Dame”, etc. The main movement came to nothing after a brief burst of enthusiasm, but its nursery offshoot did thrive for thirty years or more. In 1908 St Anne’s Nursery School took up residence in Burston House in Pittville Circus, as an institution which trained young women to become nursery nurses, while at the same time taking in deserving infants with whom they could learn the skills of nursing. The organisation was named after St Anne, according to Apocryphal tradition the mother of Mary and the grandmother of Jesus, and so a patron saint of housewives, women who were pregnant or wished to have children, etc. The College only remained at Burston House until 1912, when it moved around the corner to larger premises at Inholmes, formerly a school, which was renamed St Anne’s. At Burston House only eighteen nursery nurses could be employed to look after seven babies (1911 census), whereas at the new house there was room for twenty-six nurses and eleven babies. The College continued at St Anne’s until it entered voluntary liquidation in 1935. (The Cheltenham Annuaire located St Anne’s Nursery College at next-door Selkirk Villa in 1909, but this was perhaps in error.)
Other names: Burston House (name in use 1886 to present).

St Anne’s Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35; St Anne’s, Pittville Circus Road). St Anne’s Nursery College moved, under the management of its Commandant Miss Holworthy,  from Burston House to the large house nearby on Pittville Circus Road which had recently been known as Inholmes, housing a preparatory boarding school. The name of the College was simply transferred from Burston House to Inholmes (now St Anne’s), and remained in use in this full form until the College went into voluntary liquidation in 1935.
Other names: Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present).

Stantway (name in use 1896 – 1933; now 49 Clarence Square). Stantway is the name of a hamlet of the Forest of Dean, east of Westbury-on-Severn. The Pittville house name dates from 1896, the year stockbroker Richard Sims and his family moved into the property; he was born in Stroud and had lived in Stroud and Painswick. Stantway is about twenty miles from Stroud, across the Severn, but no specific association has yet been found with the Sims family other than general proximity to Stroud.

Star Court: see Prestwich Lodge (name in use 1858 – 1963+).

St Arvans (name in use 1873 – to present; St Arvans Court, 125 Evesham Road). St Arvans is paired with St Leonard’s next door on Evesham Road, near to the Pump Room. Both were built at the same time, and probably by the same builder. Both initially housed members of the clergy. The Rev. William Henry Wright was appointed Vicar of St Paul’s, Cheltenham in late 1870, and lived for the first few years on Bath Road. Lancashire-born, he had studied at St Bees’ Divinity College in Cumberland and had previously been Vicar of Everton, Liverpool. In 1873 he and his household moved into the newly built St Arvans. The reference in the case of St Arvans seems to be to the place rather than the locally known hermit/saint: the village of St Arvans is just outside Chepstow in Monmouthshire. It may be coincidental that the Duke of Beaufort, an extensive landowner in Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, is the patron of St Arvans Church, and was commemorated in the name Beaufort Villas on land adjacent to Pittville’s St Arvans (see Beaufort).

Steeniecot (name in use 1875 – 81; now Tower House, Pittville Circus). Also Steenicot, Stenycott. The name Steeniecot commemorates the tragic death of Stephen Showers, son of Major Edward Samuel Graeme Showers, in 1869. Stephen Showers’ grandmother, the widow of Indian veteran General Edward Melian Gullifer Showers, had moved into the house with her son Major Edward Showers when it was known as Apsley House, in 1871. Two years earlier, the family had been devastated by a boating accident on the Avon near Tewkesbury, when Stephen Showers, aged fourteen and a half, had been in the process of changing sides in the rowing boat with his friend Frederick Dixon (16); they had tripped and both fallen in the water, drowning. Steenie is a familiar Scottish diminutive form of the name “Stephen” (see, for example, Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet – Letter 11: “‘Here, Dougal,’ said the Laird, ‘gie Steenie a tass of brandy down stairs, till I count the siller and write the receipt.’”) Cot is a regional word for a small house or humble lodging (comparable to cottage). Stephen’s grandmother died in late 1873, and his father renamed the house Steeniecot in memory his son “Steenie” in 1874/5. The style of name-formation is comparable to that of Phayrecot, further round the Circus, renamed in 1867.
Other names: Apsley House (name in use 1844 – 74); Luddenham (name in use 1881 – 93); St Paul’s Vicarage (name in use 1894 – 1914); Tower House (name in use 1916 to present).

St Idloes (name in use 1887 – 96; now East Eglinton/West House, Pittville Circus). St Idloes is the name a 7th-century Celtic saint about whom little is known. He is said to have chosen the modern town of Llanidloes (“parish or settlement around the church of St Idloes”) in Powys, central Wales, for the site for his church. The Pittville house St Idloes was originally known as Rosehaugh (Villa), but the name was changed to St Idloes when the Rev. Thomas Wolseley Lewis moved in with his family during 1887. Thomas Lewis became a master at Cheltenham College, and his wife Emily taught at the Ladies’ College. Although Thomas Lewis was born in Llanrwst, Denbighshire, in North Wales, his father had become vicar of Llanbrynmair, a parish neighbouring Llanidloes in Powys, by 1841. The family, including the young Thomas, lived near the old parish church at Llan, outside Llanbrynmair on the Llanidloes road. In 1851 Thomas’s father became vicar of Manafon, slightly further from Llanidloes in Powys. Thomas Wolseley Lewis’s wife was also from Powys: she had been born and brought up in nearby Welshpool. Thomas Wolseley Lewis’s regard for St Idloes’ church is indicated by the fact that when the medieval Gothic church was restored by public appeal in the early 1880s, a generous donation of £50 was made by “The Rev. T. Wolseley Lewis and family” (Oswestry Advertiser, 12 April 1882). Several years later the Lewises moved to Pittville and brought the name of the saint with them.
Other names: Rosehaugh Villa (names in use 1844 – 85); Eglinton (name in use 1897 – 1934); see also Eglinton East (name in use 1937 to present), Eglinton West (name in use 1938 – 50+).

St Ives’ Court: see Marston Lodge (name in use 1861 – 1915; demolished); Marston Villa (name in use 1859 – 71).

St Leonard’s (name in use 1872 – 1909; now Goldington House; Evesham Road). Built at the same time as its neighbour St Arvans, both initially housed clergymen. St Leonard’s was named after the Gloucestershire village of Upton St Leonard’s. The first residents, the Rev. Canon Newlove (in his mid sixties) and his wife Lucy moved into the house in late December 1872, from staying at Bowden Hall, Upton St Leonard’s, near Gloucester, where they knew the Birchalls (see Clarefield, and references in The diary of a Victorian squire: extracts from the diaries and letters of Dearman & Emily Birchall (1983), p. 12). Richard Newlove, born in Leeds in 1806 and long-time Vicar of Thorner in Yorkshire, had been domestic chaplain to the Earl of Harewood, and was a Canon of the diocese of Ripon.
Other names: Goldington (names in use 1921 to present); Goldington House (name in use 1946 to present).

St Martin’s (name in use 1918 – 25; now Lisle House, Clarence Square). The site was more fully known as St Martin’s Home and St Martin’s Hospital. In late 1914 the Cheltenham Ladies’ College boarding house Eversleigh, on Parabola Road, was converted to a wartime VAD hospital, and renamed St Martin’s. The motivation for this particular name is unclear, though the best-known counterpart at the time was probably St Martin’s Hospital for Incurables in London. St Martin’s VAD Hospital transferred to Lisle House in Clarence Square, lent by the owner Mrs James Winterbotham, in 1918, for the duration of the war, and brought its name with it. After the war, the house was managed by the Gloucestershire Branch of the Royal Red Cross Society, working with the Ministry of Pensions, and was converted to St Martin’s Home for Disabled Soldiers, in 1920 housing twenty-nine patients in the main house and in a temporary wooden ward-room erected in the grounds. The Commandant, Miss Alice Rhoda Yonge, and an assistant, lived at St Martin’s until 1925, when its use as a hospital ceased. Over several years the building was then refurbished, and was reopened in 1929 with some four, soon rising to ten or so, apartments. The ward-room in the garden was removed, and was much later replaced by a terrace of residential accommodation named St Martin’s Terrace.
Other names: Lisle House (name in use 1867 to present); Lisle Villa (name in use 18418 – 66).

St Paul’s Vicarage (1) (name in use 1894 – 1914; now Tower House, Pittville Circus). In the early 1890s St Paul’s Church launched an appeal for its first vicarage, seeking to raise £400 from the residents of Cheltenham and the neighbourhood. By October 1892 £300 had been raised, and in 1894 the Rev. George Philips Pearce moved into the new St Paul’s Vicarage on the edge of Pittville Circus with his growing family, from private lodgings at 3 Blenheim Parade (now 7 Evesham Road). The house remained St Pauls’ vicarage until the Rev. Thomas Cave-Moyle moved out of the house into a new “vicarage” in Clarence Square, on the death of his elderly mother in 1911. The name lived on into 1914, though the house remained unoccupied. It was eventually put up for sale in that year, but not before fire had broken out in the upper storey servants’ quarters in May 1914. The fire brigade contained the damage, and the police were unable to decide whether it was caused accidentally or by incendiarism.

St Paul’s Vicarage (2) (name in use 1930 – 49+; now 94 Evesham Road). When the Revd. George Freeman Irwin was appointed Incumbent of St Paul’s Church near Pittville in 1926 he lived in the old Vicarage in Clarence Square. But he left in 1929, and the new Vicar, the Revd. William Rettallack Bellerby, fresh from parish work in Leicester and then Sheffield, moved into new accommodation at 94 Evesham Road; the house, previously called Clarefield, became the new St Paul’s Vicarage. The functional name lasted during Bellerby’s incumbency, though after the introduction of house numbers on Evesham Road in 1937 it was sometimes referred to in parallel as 94 Evesham Road.
Other names: Apsley House (name in use 1844 – 74); Luddenham (name in use 1881 – 93); ; Steeniecot (name in use 1875 – 81); St Paul’s Vicarage (name in use 1894 – 1914).

Strathdurn (name in use 1870 – 1950+; now Irving House (2), Pittville Circus Road). Also Strathdurn Villa (1876-7); Strathdown (1871, 1938); Strathburn (1872); Strathburne (1875); Stratherne (1875). The name Strathdurn appears to be unprecedented before it was associated with the house in Pittville Circus Road. Its first occurrence is in the Cheltenham Looker-On of 22 November 1870, when the house, a “superior villa” “known as Strathdurn, Pittville”, was offered for sale. As the original owner is unknown at this point, any ideas about the origin of the name are purely speculative. It would seem likely, however, that it is a variant of the place name Strathdearn (occasionally Strathdern), twenty miles south-east of Inverness. Surgeon-Major James Alexander Dunbar (Inspector of Hospitals in the Bengal Army) and his family moved in soon after the sale, and are unlikely to have been involved in the naming of the house. Early directories published during Dunbar’s residency seem confused as to the spelling of the name.

Sudeley Arms (name in use 1850 to present; Sudeley Arms, 25 Prestbury Road). Also Sudeley House (1851). Originally 1 Portland Square, the house was John Berington’s ale, porter, and cider stores before he sold up in 1848 and George Holland established the Sudeley Arms in 1850 (see Mike Grindley “Portland Square and Albert Place District”). The Sudeley Arms was preceded by a Sudeley Place in nearby Winchcombe Street (see Hodsdon, Gazetteer). Both take their name from Sudeley Castle just south of Winchcombe, or the names of the Barons Sudeley  (first creation in 1299; third creation in 1838).

Sunnyside (name in use 1874 – 1950+; now Byron Court, Pittville Circus Road). A conventional house name first recorded in Pittville Circus Road in the Cheltenham Annuaire of 1874, when it was said to be unoccupied. This suggests that the name was conferred by the owner, keen to appeal to potential residents, perhaps with a light-hearted glance at Vallombrosa (“shady vale”) opposite. The house is on the southern side of the road, as it bends towards Hewlett Road, and so has a southern aspect to the rear. The first occupant was Mrs Angelena Brown (probably Angela E. Brown), widow of Royal Engineer Alexander Brown, and the couple had spent much time in Sri Lanka before Angela returned to England, to her family in Cornwall and then, after Sunnyside, to Pittville Lawn Villa on Pittville Lawn. By the early 1940s the house was being used as a maternity hospital.
Other names: Pengwern College Annexe (name in use 1926 – 38).

Tally-Ho (name in use 1944 – 5; precise location currently uncertain; off a service road north of Pittville Circus Road). James Loughran, horse-dealer, lived in Winchcombe Street before he moved to Tally-Ho, Pittville Circus Road. He had traded in horses in the 1920s in Comber, near Newtownards, in County Down, before coming to England, and dealt in horses locally and raced in Cotswold point-to-point meetings (Auctioneer and Limerick were two of his competitive horses). The Tally-Ho Stables were in operation at the site from 1939, with sales of fifty horses a time advertised, and he lived there from at least 1944, when the Tally-Ho Stables came to be called simply Tally-Ho. The name Tally-Ho, from the hunting cry (“view-halloo”, as at the first sight of a fox), is not an unusual name for a rural property, especially an inn or other commercial establishment; in this case it alerts customers to Loughran’s business of dealing in horses for sale or hire, for hacking, hunting, and racing. The establishment does not seem to have survived James Loughran’s death in 1945.

Tally-Ho Cottage (name in use 1944 – 5; next to Tally-Ho (Stables), off a service road north of Pittville Circus Road). By 1944 occupants were found for Tally-Ho Cottage, attached or adjacent to Tally-Ho stables managed by Irish horse-dealer James Loughran. The occupants were Kathleen M. Davies and Agnes C. Brown. The name is not otherwise recorded in Pittville.

Terhill House (name in use 1848 – 1909; now Terhill, Pittville Circus). Also Terhill (1888 to present; Pittville Circus). Edward Jefferies Esdaile, Esq. and his family were the first occupants of Terhill House in Pittville Circus. They moved in around 1848, and brought the house-name with them from Somerset, where Edward Esdaile had been born and brought up. Terhill House, at Terhill, Cothelstone, near Taunton, was built in 1788 by Thomas Slocombe, and the estate of Terhill Park was acquired by the Esdaile family early in the nineteenth century. Edward’s father, also Edward Jefferies Esdaile, lived at Terhill House, Taunton, when he married in 1809. His son Edward was born there several years afterwards (baptised 1813).

Three (name in use 1934 – 8; now 6 Albert Road). Before 1939 all houses in Albert Road were named, not numbered. One house in a development of two sets of semi-detached houses built in the mid 1930s bucked the trend by calling itself “Three” (not “3”). It was the third house on the left-hand side of the road, after Rothesay Mansions and Abbeywood, and was first occupied by Job Frederick Biggs, in mid 1934. He died “at his new home”, which he had called “Three”, in December 1934. Subsequent owners retained the name “Three” until 1939, when surveyor James Gooding moved in with his family, and the house was thereafter known as 6 Albert Road.

Tidmington Garage (name in use 1929 – 45+; now 22-24 and The Mews, Malden Road). When fly proprietor Edward Butler moved out of this house in 1929, William Edwards and his family moved in, setting up the Tidmington Garage on this premises for many years. Ever since the early days the site had been used for an activity relating to transport, in keeping with the fashion of the day.
Other names: Tidmington House Stables (name in use 1889 – 91).

Tidmington House (name in use 1889 – 95; now Sligo House, 2 Wellington Road). Tidmington House was named after the village of Tidmington, just south of Shipston on Stour in Warwickshire. The name was introduced by surgeon Richard Edmund Brain Horniblow, when he moved into the house in Pittville with his family in 1889. For many years earlier the house had been known as Alwington House. Although Richard was born in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, his father and grandfather came from Shipston on Stour. Both had married into Tidmington families (the Snows and the Brains), and Richard’s grandfather, surgeon William Horniblow, engaged in property deals in Tidmington. The name Tidmington House was short-lived, and was changed to Sligo House with the arrival of Irishman Alexander Duke in 1900.
Other names: Alwington Villa (name in use 1844 – 95); Sligo House (name in use 1897 to present).

Tidmington House Stables (name in use 1889 – 91; now 22-4 and The Mews, Malden Road). When the name of Alwington House was changed by new residents in 1889 to Tidmington House, the stable block at the end of the garden which provided accommodation for cab proprietor Thomas Eager and his family changed name too, to Tidmington House Stables. It was probably too early for Stables to be changed as well, to Cottage or Mews, as happened in Pittville into the twentieth century. The name Tidmington House Stables had by 1913 changed again: it is likely that the property was split in two, with one part known as Alwington Stables and the other as Tidmington Stables.
Other names: Tidmington Garage (name in use 1929 – 45+).

Tidmington Mews (name in use 1911 – 28; now 22-24 Malden Road). The house was occupied by (part of) the Eager family, who had lived there since at least 1891 as cab proprietors. From 1918 Frederick Westborough lived there for a few years, before the fly proprietor Edward Butler appears to have taken possession of both this property and the adjoining Alwington Stables for his business.
Other names: Tidmington Stables (name in use 1889 – 91).

Tidmington Stables (name in use 1900 – 16; now 22-4 Malden Road). This name appears to have been applied to part of the old Alwington Villa Stables, both parts of which were lived in by the Eager family, who had been there since at least 1891: the main house changed from Alwington Villa to Tidmington House around 1885.
Other names: Tidmington Mews (name in use 1911 – 28).

Torrington (name in use 1936 only; now 1 Albert Road). When Lilian How (sister of Florence Earengey of 3 Wellington Square, Pittville) moved into 1 Albert Road the house was known by its number. Soon after she moved in, she experimented with calling it Torrington, but the new name never stuck and in subsequent years it reverted to 1 Albert Road. Torrington was the name of the house on Western Road, Cheltenham, that her family had lived in during the early years of the 20th century. Her father, John How, had originally brought the name to Cheltenham from the name of his native village of Torrington in north Devon. Lilian How lived at the house until her death in 1957.
Other names: Pittendynie (name in use 1936).

(The) Tower House (name in use 1916 to present; (The) Tower House, Pittville Circus). The previous St Paul’s Vicarage had moved from this site in 1911, and the house remained unoccupied for several years; in 1914 a fire broke out in the (upper) servants’ quarters. The new owner, Colonel Vaughan, put in a planning application in 1915 to make “additions” to the Vicarage, preparatory to moving in himself (a similar application had been made in 1914 by F. Palmer). When he did move in, briefly, in late 1915 or in 1916, Col. Vaughan renamed the house (The) Tower House, after its characteristic architectural feature, a three-storey tower with “Regency-style battlements” which forms the north-western corner of the building, facing the entrance to Pittville Circus. The tower is visible on the house plan shown on the 1855-7 Cheltenham Old Town Survey. Note that a similar three-storey tower existed on the nearby Selkirk Villa (now demolished).
Other names: Apsley House (name in use 1844 – 74); Luddenham (name in use 1881 – 93); Steeniecot (name in use 1875 – 81); St Paul’s Vicarage (name in use 1894 – 1914).

Tracy House (name in use 1878 – 1922; now 59 Pittville Lawn). In 1878 Tracy was principally a surname rather than a first name, from which it was (occasionally) transferred for use as a house name. Mary Crowdy lived at 59 Pittville Lawn (then known as No 11) with her parents Rear Admiral Charles Crowdy and his wife Harriet. Mary married her cousin Arthur Crowdy, comfortably widowed from his previous marriage to the heiress of Billersley Hall, Alcester, in Warwickshire. Settled in Billersley Hall, the younger Crowdys tried to rent out 11 Pittville Lawn, but the market was sluggish. Adverts offering the substantial property for rent appeared regularly from 1874 until early 1879. It was towards the end of this process, in late 1878, that the rental adverts suddenly switched from describing the house as 11 Pittville Lawn to Tracy House, Pittville Lawn, a name it retained into the twentieth century. Years later, Billersley Hall was eventually sold in 1906 to the Hon. Algernon Henry Charles Hanbury-Tracy, son of the 4^th Baron Sudeley almost thirty years later in 1905-6. It is possible that the name Tracy House derives from Hanbury-Tracy, the surname of the Barons Sudeley of Toddington, Gloucestershire (see also the Sudeley Arms in Pittville). The Hanbury-Tracys had earlier connections with Pittville, as cousins, the Misses Leyson, lived at Sinclair Villa (now Rathlin, in Pittville Circus) from 1846 until 1866, and the Honourable Frances Hanbury Tracy died at the Circus house in 1867. However, any closer association between the Crowdys and the Baron remains hidden.  The choice of the name Tracy in 1878 may have been influenced by more mundane factors. With the house difficult to rent, the Crowdys or their agents were looking for a means of making the house seem more attractive. In another spa town, Leamington, an eccentric writer and Russianist Edward Tracy Turnerelli, grandson of an Italian count and son of celebrated sculptor Peter Turnerelli, was attracting much media attention by various mediagenic and sometimes ill-judged schemes. In the early 1870s he had decided to call his house in Leamington Tracy Lodge or Tracy Villa (Tracy was his mother’s maiden name), he became embroiled in various extreme legal battles, and in mid 1878 launched a provocative plan to present Prime Minister Disraeli with a so-called “People’s Tribute”, a golden laurel wreath marking Disraeli’s success at the Congress of Berlin, seeking peace in the Balkans with Russia (Disraeli declined the gift). It is possible that Turnerelli’s name and showmanship may have influenced the renaming of 11 Pittville Lawn as Tracy House.

Tregenna (name in use 1924 – 42; now 16 Wellington Square). The Baker family had been living at 16 Wellington Square since 1924: widow Katherine Baker and her daughter Matilda. After a year of so they rented out a couple of the rooms as well. When Katherine Baker died in 1924, her daughter renamed the house Tregenna, in memory of the life her mother and her maternal ancestors had enjoyed in St Ives in Cornwall. Katherine Baker was born in St Ives as Catherine Stevens, and for years she had lived in the shadow of Tregenna Castle in the town. Her family had lived in St Ives for generations; perhaps they were even related to the Stephens family of Tregenna Castle.

Tregoney (name  in use 1935 – 43; now 58 Albert Road). Tregoney (now usually Tregony) is the name of a village in south-central Cornwall, between St Austell and Truro. In Pittville, the name was given to the newly built house in Albert Road into which Theodore Leslie Thompson, his wife Margaret, and their family moved in 1935. There is currently no clear motivation for the name, though the celebrated hymn-writer Archer Thompson Gurney was born in Tregony in 1820, and he may be related through his mother, Catherine Harriet (née Thompson). Tregoney is only occasionally used as a house name. The house in Albert Road was known by its number after the mid-century.

Tresmere (name in use 1918 to present day; now Tresmere, Pittville Circus). Selkirk Villa was renamed Tresmere around 1918, when Ernest and Mildred How moved in, after raising their family in Chester. Mildred How was born Amelia Mildred Stevens, and at the time of her marriage lived in the parish of Egloskerry, just north-west of Launcester in Cornwall. The adjacent parish, further along the road out of Egloskerry, is the parish of Tresmere (now more usually spelt Tresmeer). Neither Ernest nor Mildred had Cornish ancestry, but Mildred’s father had been Governor of Bodmin Gaol for ten years from 1883. She took the Cornish village name with her when she moved into her new accommodation in Pittville. The original house, which a characteristic round tower, has been demolished, and replaced by a modern apartment block.
Other names: (site of) Selkirk Villa (name in use 1837 – 1917).

Trevellis House (name in use 1836 – 49; now 66 Prestbury Road). Also Trevillis House (1841-6). Owner and occupier Anne Powne Fletcher (née Gully) named her new house Trevellis (also Trevillis) House after the house Trevillis in St Keyne, near Liskeard in Cornwall, which she inherited under the terms of her father’s will. Later the Pittville house was known as 1 Pittville Villas, before twentieth-century renumbering put it at 66 Prestbury Road. The Gullys held extensive property in Cornwall, and at one time Anne was in dispute with the Duchy of Cornwall about their holdings in the county, which she laid claim to (the “extraordinary claim” is itemised in the Morning Post of 9 June 1842).

Trevor Dene (name in use 1874 – 1939; now 98 Evesham Road). The name Trevor Dene is apparently previously unrecorded. It is associated with the arrival at the house of its first resident Elizabeth Taylor, widow of Liverpool-born Joshua Taylor, gentleman, and her four children in 1874. Dene is a conventional English place-name element, often deriving from Old English denu “(place in) the valley”. Trevor is a Welsh personal name (Trefor) deriving from the place-name element tre- or tref- “a farm or homestead”. It can also be an Irish personal name. No relevant link between the name and the Taylor family has yet been established. When Elizabeth Taylor arrived in 1874, Leckhampton already boasted a “Trevor Lodge”, as did several other places in Britain, including North Wales, where a number of Odd Fellow lodges were established called “Loyal Trevor Lodge”.

Trouville (name in use 1874 – 1944; now 96 Evesham Road).  Trouville (in full, Trouville-sur-Mer) is the name of a fashionable holiday resort that was popular with Victorian holiday-makers and especially sea-bathers, near to Deauville, in the Calvados region of Normandy, northern France. The first residents of Pittville’s Trouville were stationer and travelling salesman Charles Smith (later variously described as a merchant, and then a gentleman), his wife Ann and sister Sarah, but there seems to be no documented association between the family and Trouville in France. Charles Smith died at the house in 1886, aged 71.

Tyndale House (name in use 1844 to present; Clarence Square). Also Tyndale. The house was known simply as 1 Pittville Terrace North until the arrival of George Stokes and his family from Colchester in 1844, who renamed it Tyndale House. Stokes had been President of the Colchester Mechanics’ Institute in Essex, and was also an indefatigable editor and leading light of the national Religious Tract Society, as well as a founder member of the Parker Society for the publication of texts relating to the Reformation (in contrast to the Tractarians, who published the Library of the Fathers, from 1838). In Cheltenham he maintained his RTS interests and also became a committee member of the Cheltenham Auxiliary Church Missionary Society, under Francis Close. He named his house after William Tyndale, a leading figure of the Protestant Reformation, and translator of the Bible. Stokes wrote about Tyndale regularly in his publications for the RTS, including A brief history of the British Reformation (1832), though in his academic work he sometimes preferred the more scholarly spelling Tindal. See also Holy Trinity Vicarage.

Upnor (1) (name in use 1916 – 25; now Regency Lodge, 69 Pittville Lawn). Heathfield Lodge became Upnor around 1916, when the Revd. John Hodson moved in from Rowanlea on Hewlett Road with his wife Eliza Denham Hodson. They named their new house after Upnor, the name of the village in Kent, near Rochester, when the Revd. Hodson had served as Rector from 1906 until 1910. The couple stayed in Pittville Lawn until 1922, when they moved again, to a house on the south-western corner of Wellington Square, No 19, but named again Upnor by the Hodsons. Rather confusingly, the name seemed to have lived on in Pittville Lawn for several years, even though there was a newer Upnor close by.
Other names: Heathfield Lodge (name in use 1841 – 1950+); Llyndda (name in use 1923 – 37); Regency Lodge (name in use 1938 to present).

Upnor (2) (name in use 1922 – 38; now 19 Wellington Square). The Revd. John Hodson and his wife Eliza Denham Hodson moved from the house they had named Upnor (after the village in Kent where the Revd. Hodson had been Rector between 1906 and 1910) into their new house in Wellington Square, which they also named Upnor. After the death of the Revd. Hodson and his wife, their son Denham lived in the house until 1938, when he left and the name reverted to its previous number.
Other names: Holmains (name in use 1922 – 38); Wellington Villa (1) (name in use 1892 – 1950).

Vallombrosa (name in use 1848 – 90; now Homespring House, Pittville Circus Road). Also Valambrose Cottage (1847), Vollombrosa House (1848), Vallambrosia (1851), Vallombrosoo (1871). The name Vallombrosa (=”shady vale”) comes from the forested region of the same name in Tuscany, twenty miles south-east of Florence. The area in general, and its Benedictine abbey in particular, were popular with English travellers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and had welcomed William Beckford, William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and many others. The key reference which alerted Victorians to the beauties of Vallombrosa was an allusion in the first book of Milton’s Paradise Lost (ll. 302-4): “Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks, In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades High overarch’t imbowr”. The first occupant of the house, from 1846 until 1848, was former Indian judge William Henry Valpy, his wife Caroline, and their children. The family had returned to England to seek sanctuary first in Hastings and then in Cheltenham, as William was not healthy. William Valpy’s father was a schoolmaster who published Classical grammars and anthologies of classical poetry; his elder brother Abraham ran a publishing house specialising in the Classics (his 143 volumes of the Delphin Classics were well known at the time). William would have been brought up to be at home with epic literature (his father owned a first edition of Paradise Lost) , and so it is little surprise that he chose Vallombrosa for the name of his Cheltenham house. Perhaps he also knew that Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom his brother had recently published, had visited the Abbey of Vallombrosa in 1847, the year in which the name was named. The Valpy family stayed in Cheltenham for only a few years, before emigrating (like other Pittville residents such as estate architect Robert Stokes and Pump Room lessee Henry Seymour) in 1849 to New Zealand, where the family enjoyed the life of wealthy farmers before William’s untimely and sudden death in 1852.
Other names: Deanwood House (name in use 1891 – 1938).

Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7; now Old Lodge, Wellington Square). The name by which the former 1 Victoria Villas was known, perhaps briefly when a furniture sale was advertised there in 1856 (Cheltenham Chronicle 12 February). The house retained the name into 1857, when fishmonger Daniel Olive moved in with his family, but the Olives soon changed it to Wellington Cottage.
Other names: Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43); Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67); Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939); Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881); Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present).

Victoria House (name in use 1841 – 60; now Wellington Lodge, Wellington Square). The house was built by nurseryman Richard Ware in 1828-9 as his own residence (Blake, Pittville). After his death in 1832, his trustees began the construction of two villas in his grounds, known from 1837 as Victoria Villas. Victoria House was the principal house in the grounds, and its name forms a group with the two villas, all celebrating the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne in 1837, as did many other buildings in Cheltenham, including the Queen’s Hotel, opened in 1838. The naem was apparently conferred by Miss Harris, who rented the house from 1840 (Campbell).
Other names: Wellington Lodge (name in use 1857 to present).

Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43; now Old Lodge, Wellington Square). Also in early use the house seems to have been known briefly as 1 Victoria Villas, from which Victoria Villa derives. Both this and 2 Victoria Villas were built by the trustees of nurseryman Richard Ware’s will. In the 1850s it is referred to as Victoria Cottage (next-door to Gothic Cottage). By 1857 it had become known as Wellington Cottage. The name celebrates the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne in 1837. See also Victoria House.
Other names: Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7); Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67); Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939); Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881); Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present).

Vine Cottage (name in use 1877 – 1945+; now 16 Northfield Passage). Vine Cottage was offered for auction under this name in 1877 (Cheltenham Chronicle 13 November p. 8); it was situated at the rear of 16 Northfield Terrace (also auctioned), and had a kitchen, two bedrooms, a wash-room, and other amenities. Although the house had been occupied since at least the time of the 1851 census, it did not gain its name, Vine Cottage, until about 1877. At this time of its existence it was leased to tenants and operated as a brothel, or as the “Northfield(ian) Temple of Venus”, as it was known to the newspapers in the 1880s. Its occupants in 1871 were two women (one separated from her husband, with a young son) and another a female lodger aged 24. Both were seamstresses, which could at the time be a euphemism for “prostitute”. In 1877 a young woman, of the “frail sisterhood”, died there in “singular circumstances” (Cheltenham Mercury 13 January , p. 2), perhaps prompting the auction later that year. The police were called to the house in 1884 as a result of a theft, and Police Inspector Irving, who had been one of the officers investigating the suspicious death there in 1877, claimed to have known that the house operated as a brothel for the previous sixteen years (Gloucestershire Echo 10 April, p. 3). At that time it was run as a “lodging-house” by Fanny Waite and George Jew, a travelling cigar salesman, whom she subsequently married. There is a strong suggestion that No 17 next-door (then Northfield Cottage) was also operating as a brothel. The conventional name was presumably useful in distinguishing it for clients from the adjacent numbered houses. In addition, a link between Vine and “entertainment” is possible; a brothel in Albuquerque at the same time was called Vine Cottage, said to be “a nod to a wine room”, and in America at least “the most elaborate brothels, often called “parlours”, “cottages”, or “wine rooms”, were richly furnished and catered to businessmen (Howard Bryan, Albuquerque Remembered). By the time of the 1891 census the house was occupied by a “regular” family, though the name was retained for many years to come.

Vista Villa (name in use 1861 – 6; now 26 Albert Road). Descriptive name: Vista Villa was the first name for this house, which offered a vista at the front over the southern and largely unbuilt section of Pittville Crescent and at the back, a direct line of sight through to the Pittville Gardens to the left of Wyddrington House on Pittville Lawn. The name is probably associated with the earliest residents, solicitor Joseph Allen Higgins, Herefordshire and Worcestershire JP, who moved here with his household from Ledbury. The name was short-lived, as it changed to Melcombe Villa around 1866 when the Higginses moved to Lansdown.
Other names: Melcombe Villa (name in use 1867 – 78); Melcombe House (name in use 1878 – 93); Hawksworth (1894 to present).

Walsingham (name in use 1881 – 1933; now 100 Evesham Road). Also Walsingham House (1902 – 5). The house name Walsingham comes from the middle name of the first occupant of the house, Charles Walsingham Minchener, born in Clontarf, Dublin of an English father, but a farmer at Lake Ellesmere (Te Waihora) in the Canterbury region of New Zealand before removing to Cheltenham, marriage, and then the couple’s Pittville house. Minchener’s New Zealand farm was also called Walsingham.
Other names: Alipore House (name in use 1867 – 78).

Wellesley Court (name in use 1900 – 50+; now Clarence Court Hotel). Also Wellesley Court Hotel (1921 – 50+); The widowed Rev. Christopher Heath moved into Wellesley Court (then Ross House) in 1900, when he retired in his eighties from his post as Vicar of Hucclecote. He immediately changed the house name. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, had been a popular visitor to Cheltenham, staying on five occasions between 1805 and 1828 (see Blake & Beacham; Hodsdon, Gazetteer) and his name is commemorated in several streets and houses in Pittville (such as Wellington Road, Wellington Square, and Apsley House). The Rev. Heath died at Wellesley Court in 1909, aged 92. See also Wellington Court.
Other names: Ross House (name in use 1840 -99).

Wellesley House (name in use 1841 to present; Wellington Square). Wellesley House was the distinguished name originally given to the house by the management of the Pittville estate. The house is listed in the 1841 census under this name (when it was occupied by a workman and his wife, prior to sale or let). The name Wellesley House was also used in sale advertisements when, after Joseph Pitt’s death in 1842, many of his properties, were auctioned by order of the High Court of Chancery (“Pitt v. Pitt”) in order to meet his debts (Cheltenham Chronicle 1843, 23 September). For the name Wellesley see Wellesley Court.

Wellesley Villa (name in use 1841 – 83; now Westbury/Wellington House, Wellington Square). The name Wellesley Villa was used from time to time (and sometimes perhaps in error) in the mid 19^th century for either 1 or 2 Wellesley Villas, Wellington Square. 1 Wellesley Villas was in some years entered as Wellesley Villa in the Cheltenham Annuaire, alongside another Wellesley Villa, in Painswick Road. For the name Wellesley see Wellesley Court.
Other names: Westbury (1924 to present); Westwick (name in use 1859 – 62).

Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67; now Old Lodge, Wellington Square). The name Wellington Cottage was introduced shortly after the arrival there of fishmonger Daniel Olive, his wife Mary Ann, and family in May 1857. They changed it from the short-lived Victoria Cottage. Later in May 1857, Mary Ann Olive gave birth to a son at the house, whom they named Nolan Wellesley Olive, suggesting some deep-rooted attachment to the name Wellington/Wellesley. In turn the house name was superseded, during the residency of the Olives, by Flesk Lodge. On the name Wellington in Cheltenham see Wellington Court.
Other names: Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43); Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7); Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939); Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881); Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present).

Wellington Court (name in use 1889 – 1936; now Harwood House, Wellington Square). A conventional and rather grand name introduced when Surgeon-Major John James Saville moved into the house (previously and subsequently Harwood House) on Wellington Square in October 1889. The name of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, a popular visitor to Cheltenham is commemorated in several streets and houses in Pittville (such as Wellesley Court, Wellington Road, Wellington Square, and Apsley House). The structure of this name parallels the name of the Savilles’ former house, Cressage Lodge, in Cressage, Shropshire. The house name reverted to Harwood House in the 1930s. See also Wellesley Court.
Other names: Harwood House (name in use 1837 to present); Kashmir Court (name in use 1925 – 35).

Wellington Lodge (name in use 1857 to present; Wellington Square). Frances Maria Armstrong, one of the daughters of the Rev. Robert Carew Armstrong, late vicar of Templemore in County Tipperary, moved into Wellington Lodge from 9 Montpellier Street in 1857. Until then, the house had been called Victoria House. When Frances Armstrong moved in, it was renamed, from Wellington Square, on the east side of which it stood. The front garden now sports two large Wellingtonia trees.
Other names: Victoria House (name in use 1841 – 60).

Wellington Villa (1) (name in use 1837 – 1917; now 19 Wellington Square, though historically and briefly also No 18). One of the first wave of Pittville house names, characterised by stately grandeur and patriotism, Wellington Villa was the home from 1837 of the Rev. John Clemson Egginton and his wife Ann, who moved down from Bilbrook House near Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. The directories show some early confusion in the names of 18 and 19 Wellington Square (variously 1 and 2 Wellington Villas; No 18 was also called Wellington Villa in 1843-4, and Wellington House in 1845). When No 18 reverted to being known as Georgina Villa, No 19 remained Wellington Villa for many years. After the Rev. Egginton’s death in 1850, his wife Anne remained in the house until 1867. On the name Wellington in Cheltenham see Wellington Court. See also Bilbrook House, Wellesley Villa.
Other names: Holmains (name in use 1904 – 22); Upnor (2) (name in use 1922 – 38).

Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881; now Old Lodge, Wellington Square). The name applied in the census of 1881, perhaps in error, to fishmonger Daniel Olive’s Flesk Lodge.
Other names: Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43); Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7); Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67); Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939); Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present).

Westbourne House (name in use 1851 to present; Westbourne Drive, off Pittville Circus Road). Westbourne House was advertised for sale, without a name, as a “well-built and commodious detached Freehold Villa Residence, as lately erected by [Pittville builder] Mr. Billings”, in the Cheltenham Chronicle of 31 January 1850. It was first occupied by General Edward Melian Gullifer Showers (Royal Horse Artillery) and his wife Amy, returned from a career in India spanning about fifty years. The reason for the name Westbourne House is unknown: it was the name of the London residence of General Rowland Hill, 1^st Viscount Hill, Commander-in-Chief of the Army (1828-39), which may be relevant. But Westbourne was by the mid nineteenth century a common element of street names (see, for example, earlier Westbourne Terrace and Westbourne Grove in London). Cheltenham’s Westbourne Terrace and Westbourne Villas, as well as Westbourne Drive leading to Westbourne House, are later. See Steeniecot.

Westbury (name in use 1924 to present; Westbury, Wellington Square). The house was known as 1 Wellesley Villas until retired Royal Artillery officer David Alexander Gardiner moved in with his wife Enid Lile Gardiner in 1924. Enid had lived in Pittville for many years, and lived with the rest of her family, including her father solicitor Oliver John Williams, at Wellington Court, on the same side of Wellington Square, at the time of the 1911 census. On census night 1911,  months before her marriage, her future husband David Alexander Gardiner was also a “Visitor” staying at the house. The owner of the house was, however, apparently Evelyn Grant, wife of John Henry Grant, who had lived in the adjoining semi-detached property, Edenham (formerly 2 Wellesley Villas) since 1919. The motivation for the name Westbury is unknown; it is likely to be related to either Westbury-on-Severn or Westbury-on-Trym in Gloucestershire, or to the village of Westbury in Wiltshire, but neither the Gardiners nor the Williams seem to have had relations in any of those places. The house next to and to the north of both of these houses is Eastholme, so arguably an East/West parallelism may operate.
Other names: Wellesley Villa (name in use 1841 – 83); Westwick (name in use 1859 – 62).

West House: see Eglinton (name in use 1897 – 1934); Rosehaugh Villa (names in use 1844 – 85); St Idloes (name in use 1887 – 96); Eglinton West (name in use 1938 – 50+).

Weston House  (name in use 1845 to present; now 17 Pittville Lawn). Although the house was built by Cheltenham builder James Creed, it seems that it was named by its first resident, Maria (“Mrs. Waldo”) Sibthorp, who moved into the property in 1845. Maria was the estranged wife of the popular but outspoken ultra-right MP for Lincoln, Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp (who liked to be known as “Colonel Sibthorp”). After Mrs. Sibthorp moved into Weston House, she is regularly found in the Arrivals and Departures section of the Cheltenham Looker-On, sometimes alone and sometimes with her son Henry (Arthur Mainwaring Waldo) Sibthorp. Their destination is usually Weston Rectory, Weston-under-Penyard, near Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire. By the same token, the incumbent of the Rectory at Weston (now the Old Rectory), the Rev. Willam Brant and his wife Matilda, are both shown visiting Weston House in Cheltenham in the 1840s. The family link is not yet clear, though both Maria Sibthorp and Matilda Brant came from southern Ireland, and several Sibthorps overlapped with William Brant at Oxford.

Weston Lodge (name in use 1935 – 38; now 8 Albert Road). William Joseph and his wife Winifred had a confectioner’s shop at Wellington House, on Tenby High Street, at the time of the 1911 census; he made the confectionery and she ran the shop. In due course they moved to Weston Lodge on Harding Street, Tenby, where William died in 1921; Weston Lodge was a long-standing name for the house. Winifred remained there for several years, in 1935 moving to Pittville. She was the first occupant of her house on Albert Road, and named it Weston Lodge, in memory of her husband and the life they led in Tenby. She only stayed in the house for a few years, and when the new owners arrived in 1938 they abandoned the house name and starting calling the house by its number, 8 Albert Road.

Westville (name in use 1877 – 1903; now Daylesford, Wellington Square). Also Westville House (1878 – 1904). Formerly 3 Wellington Square East, the name of the house was changed to Westville in 1877 when long-time owner George Ridge sold up and moved out, soon after the death of his wife Amelia. According to the sale advertisement “The House is substantially built, and has a Westerly aspect, overlooking the tastefully disposed Gardens of Wellington Square” (Cheltenham Chronicle: 1877, 1 May). However, its new name commemorates the house in Sheffield, Westville House on Western Bank, in which George Ridge’s wife Amelia (née Pierson) had been brought up by her father Thomas, another solicitor, and mother Harriet.
Other names: Daylesford (name in use 1914 to present).

Westwick (name in use 1859 – 62; now Westbury, Wellington Square). Dorothea Wightwick (née Fryer) moved into Westwick in December 1859, soon after the death of her husband, Staffordshire and Gloucestershire JP Stubbs Wightwick. The couple had lived at Capel Court, Pittville Lawn since the late 1830s. The name Westwick is etymologically related to Wightwick. Burke’s Landed Gentry (vol. 2: 1847, p. 1585) states that Wightwick of Great Bloxwich, Staffordshire was an “ancient family, which […] has been seated for centuries in the counties of Stafford and Salop: in Doomsday Book [sic], it is recorded that a place called Westwike is a member of the lordship of Tettenhall Regis, co. Stafford, and hath given name to a family of Wyghtwiche, Wightwyche, or Wightwick.” Dorothea Fryer was born in Wightwick, near Wolverhampton, and in 1829 married Stubbs Wightwick, head of the Wightwick family, at Tettenhall. When Dorothea Wightwick left Pittville she took the name Westwick with her, and in 1868 she lived at Westwick, Ascot, Berks, and died in 1888 at Westwick, Easthampstead, Berks. See also Capel Court.
Other names: Wellesley Villa (name in use 1841 – 83); Westbury (1924 to present).

White House (name in use 1914 – 46; now Ellenborough House, Clarence Road). A conventional descriptive name for a house painted white. This was the name that replaced Farnah (also Farnagh) when physician Ernest Albert Dent moved to Clarence Road with his family from 20 Royal Parade, Cheltenham. Though the family originated in Staffordshire, Ernest had lived with his parents William and Alice Ada Dent and the rest of his family from 1894 at nearby 1 Berkeley Villas (now 19 Pittville Lawn), before he graduated and married. His brother Rupert Dent, the talented deaf artist and notable Pittville figure, also lived there. The house retained the name White House for some time after the Dents left the property for a new home in Mead Road.
Other names: Farnah (name in use 1873 – 1950+); Pittville Mansion (name in use 1833 – 1906).

Worcester House (name in use 1895 to present; Pittville Circus Road). Lewis Moore was a successful judge and writer on Indian affairs in Madras. He had married in India, and he and his wife Edith Catherine Moore née Johnston had brought up their family there. Neither had any particular connection with England, let alone the city of Worcester: Lewis Moore’s family came from Armagh and he had attended Trinity College, Dublin, and Edith’s family were Scottish, but both families had spent much of their lives in India. Around 1880 Edith Moore came to England, and to Cheltenham, with her young children, living first in Imperial Square and subsequently at 1 Minsterworth Villa, Old Bath Road, while her boys attended Cheltenham College. When he was 18 her elder son Lewis Grenville Moore took the entrance exam for the Indian Civil Service, and at the same time won a scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford. He started to attend the university, but within two years he was sailing for India to follow in the footsteps of his father. A year or so after he left, his mother and her remaining family moved from Minsterworth Villas into their new house in Pittville Circus Road, which she seems to have named Worcester House after her elder son’s Oxford college.

Wyddrington House (name in use 1839 to present; 55 Pittville Lawn). Thomas Smith Esq. (c1796 Breconshire – 1865 Great Malvern) bought the plot in early 1836, and was probably responsible for the name Wyddrington House. Thomas’s wife Henrietta died in 1840 and he remained in the house until 1842, when he moved to Georgina Villa (now 18 Wellington Square). In 1845 he removed again, with his new wife Anne, to Worcestershire, where his family held property (Moreton Hall near Inkberrow). The origin of the name Wyddrington is not clear. It is an archaic spelling of Widdrington, the name of a village on the Northumberland coast north of Whitley Bay and Blyth, and of the family which historically owned estates there. The Smith family were said in 1833 to be pursuing an ancient claim to their ancestral possessions “in the northern counties” (Morning Post, 31 August), and were about to enter legal dispute over lands in Blanckney in Lincolnshire: perhaps these claims also included land in Northumberland. A possible secondary source for the same name occurs in the title of a popular Gothic romance of the day: Margiana; or Widdrington Tower by “Mrs. S. Sykes” (Henrietta Sykes, nee Masterman), published in Thomas’s youth in 1808. Whatever the case, Thomas Smith obviously liked the name, as he named his new house Wyddrington House when he later moved to Church Road, Edgbaston around 1847.

 

House-names index by street                                                                        [back to top]

[houses listed in numerical sequence in each street; italics indicates names formerly in use]

Albert Road

1 Albert Road: Pittendynie (name in use 1910 – 29); Torrington (name in use 1936)
2 Albert Road, Rothesay Mansion: Rothesay House (name in use 1848 – 1918); Rothesay Mansions (name in use 1918 – 1950+)
3 Albert Road: Glengariff (name in use 1909 – 23), Damery (name in use 1925 – 7)
4 Albert Road: Abbeywood (name in use 1935 – 50+)
6 Albert Road: Three (name in use 1935 – 50+)
8 Albert Road: Weston Lodge (name in use 1935 – 38)
10 Albert Road: Flat Roofs (name in use 1935 – 45+)
16 Albert Road: Bennington (name in use 1864 – 1918)
26 Albert Road: Hawksworth (name in use 1894 to present); Melcombe House (name in use 1878 – 93); Melcombe Villa (name in use 1867 – 78); Vista Villa (name in use 1861 – 6)
28 Albert Road: Southern House (name in use 1860 – 1950+); Southern Villa (name in use 1861 – 4)
30 Albert Road, Park House: Sandown Lawn (name in use 1870 – 1950+); Sandown House (name in use 1881) 
52 Albert Road: Kennards (name in use 1937 – 48)
54 Albert Road: Lanchester (name in use 1937 – 45)
56 Albert Road: Green Gates (name in use 1937 – 45+)
58 Albert Road: Tregoney (name in use 1935 – 43)
Stanley Lawn (name in use 1873 – 1911); Handley Cross (name in use 1911 – 50+; demolished)
Pittville Court (name in use 1874 to present; rebuilt)
108 Albert Road: Ellerslie (1876 to present)
Pittville School: see Groundsman's Cottage (name in use 1939); Pate's Girls Grammar School (name in use 1935 – 50+); School House Cottage (name in use 1939 – 45+)

All Saints Road

94 All Saints Road: Glenfall Lodge (name in use 1882 – 1950+); Glenfall Villa (name in use 1866 – 81)

Central Cross Drive

Essex Lodge (name in use 1833 – 1903; demolished)

Clarence Road

Bilbrook House (name in use 1832 to present)
Camden Lodge (name in use 1835 to present)
8 Clarence Road: Retreat (name in use 1916 – 19)
Ellenborough House: Farnah (name in use 1911 – 15); Pittville Mansion (name in use 1833 – 1906); White House (name in use 1914 – 46)

Clarence Square

Tyndale House (name in use 1844 to present)
Clarence Lodge (name in use 1850 to present)
13 Clarence Square: Corelli (name in use 1895 – 1910)
19 Clarence Square: Linden Lawn (name in use 1891 – 98)
Clarence Villa (name in use 1843 – 1900): Deerhurst (name in use 1897 – 1915+)
31 Clarence Square: Corinium (name in use 1907 – 40)
43 Clarence Square: Amberley House (name in use 1853 to present)
Amberley Cottage: Amberley Court (name in use 1939 – 50+); see also Amberley Gate (name in use 1941 – 5)
Lisle House (name in use 1867 to present): Lisle Villa (name in use 1841 – 66); St Martin's (name in use 1918 – 25); see also Parkways (name in use 1936 – 49)
Clarence Court Hotel: Ross House (name in use 1840 -1899); Wellesley Court (name in use 1900 – 50+)           
46 Clarence Square: Needwood House (name in use 1891 – 1950+)
49 Clarence Square: Stantway (name in use 1896 – 1933)
50 Clarence Square: Navarre (name in use 1911 – 19)
Camden House (name in use 1837 – 89 and 1950+ to present): (Holy) Trinity Vicarage (name in use 1891 – 1950+)

East Approach Drive

St Ives’ Court: Marston Lodge (name in use 1861 – 1915; demolished); Marston Villa (name in use 1859 – 71)
Malvern Hill House (name in use 1873 to present): Malvern Hill Villa (name in use 1859 – 83)
Brompton House: Altidore Villa (name in use 1866 – 1925), Horstead House (name in use 1924 – 41); Fenwick Lodge (name in use 1941 – 50+)
Gate House (name in use 1922 to present): Edgbaston House (name in use 1873 – 1915); see also 24 Walnut Close
Pittville Pump Room (name in use 1825 to present): Pittville Spa (name in use 1825 to present)
Aubervie (name in use 1876 – 1950+; demolished, now 26 – 40 East Approach Drive); see also Aubervie Cottage (name in use 1924 – 45)

Evesham Road

1 Evesham Road: Blenheim House (name in use 1834 to present); see also Blenheim House Stables (name in use 1891 – 1929),  (site of) Evesham House Stables (name in use 1906 – 29), (site of) Evesham House Cottage (name in use 1934 – 45+)
16 Evesham Road: Darfield (name in use 1913 – 16)
36 Evesham Road: Novar Lodge (name in use 1834 – 1925)
38 Evesham Road: Cleveland House (name in use 1828 – 1950+)
40 Evesham Road: South Cleeve House (name in use 1848 – 1945)
42-80 Evesham Road: (site of) Anlaby House (name in use 1842 – 1919; demolished)
82 Evesham Road: Lomond (name in use 1933 – 6)
84 Evesham Road: Kilreague (name in use 1934 – 7)
86 Evesham Road: Longhope (name in use 1936 – 50+)
88 Evesham Road: Rosslyn (name in use 1934 – 41)
90 Evesham Road: Greenfield (name in use 1934 – 50+)
92 Evesham Road: Broadway (name in use 1934 – 42)
94 Evesham Road: St Paul's Vicarage (2) (name in use 1930 – 49+)
96 Evesham Road: Trouville (name in use 1874 – 1944) 
98 Evesham Road: Trevor Dene (name in use 1874 – 1939)
100 Evesham Road: Walsingham (name in use 1881 – 1933); Alipore House (name in use 1934 – 41)
102 Evesham Road: Evesham Lawn (name in use 1881 – 96); Casa Echalaz (name in use 1897 – 1914); Hartford House (name in use 1921 – 44)
104 Evesham Road: Holm Dene (name in use 1886 – 1950+)
106 Evesham Road: Edenholme (name in use 1892 – 1950+); Iseultdene (name in use 1887 – 91)
108 Evesham Road: Saxham (name in use 1894 – 1948+)
110 Evesham Road: Pinehurst (name in use 1913 – 50+)
Goldington House (name in use 1946 to present): St Leonard’s (name in use 1872 – 1909); Goldington (name in use 1921 to present)
The Grange (name in use 1888 to present): Marle Hill House (name in use 1830 – 1920)
125 Evesham Road: St Arvans (name in use 1873 to present)

Huntsfield Close

           2 Huntsfield Close: Grange Stables (name in use 1934 – 50+)

Malden Road

  Berkeley Mews Cottage or 1 Berkeley Mews, 25 and 27 Malden Road: Berkeley House Stables (name in use 1893 – 1938), Berkeley House Cottage (name in use 1935 – 45+)
  22 and 24 Malden Road: Tidmington Mews (name in use 1911 – 28); Tidmington Stables (name in use 1900 – 16)
  22 and 24 Malden Road and The Mews, Malden Road: Tidmington Garage (name in use 1929 – 45+); Tidmington House Stables (name in use 1889 – 91)
  39 Malden Road: Pittville Lodge Cottage (name in use 1924 – 45+)
  Outram Lodge, 90 Malden Road (name in use 1942 to present)

Marle Hill

Marle Hill (1806/09 until demolition in the 1960s)
Marle Hill House Lodge (1861)
Marle Hill Lodge (1835 – 71)

Marston Road

  Beaver House and Southfield: Altidore Stables (name in use 1911 – 23), Horstead House Cottage (name in use 1926 – 41); Fenwick Lodge Cottage (name in use 1943 – 50+)
  The Mews: Alwington Stables (name in use 1913 – 14)
  22-4 and The Mews: Alwington Villa Stables (name in use 1857 – 87)
  Middle Mews and Malvern Hill Cotttage: Malvern Hill Cottage (name in use 1929 to present)
  Coach House and Marston Cottage: Marston Lodge Stables (name in use 1911 – 12); Marston Cottage (name in use 1929 to present)

Northfield Passage

           16 Northfield Passage: Vine Cottage (name in use 1877 – 1945+)
           17 Northfield Passage: North Cottage (name in use 1841 – 86); Northfield Cottage (name in use 1901 – 45+)

Pittville Circus

Tower House (name in use 1916 to present): Apsley House (name in use 1844 – 74); Luddenham (name in use 1881 – 93); Steeniecot (name in use 1875 – 81); St Paul’s Vicarage (name in use 1894 – 1914)
East Eglinton/West House: Eglinton (name in use 1897 – 1934); Rosehaugh Villa (names in use 1844 – 85); St Idloes (name in use 1887 – 96); see also Eglinton East (name in use 1937 to present), Eglinton West (name in use 1938 – 50+)
Stanbrook House (name in use 1940 to present): Stanbrook Villa (name in use 1845 – 93)
Rathlin (name in use 1935 to present): Sinclair Villa (name in use 1845 – 1933)
Northlands Apartments: Northlands (name in use 1846 – 1950+)
Selkirk Court: (site of) Belgrano (name in use 1936 – 50+) and Pejoda (name in use 1934 – 54+)
Terhill: Terhill House (name in use 1848 – 1909)
Priors Lodge: Ash Priors (name in use 1883 – 1950+); Kyrle Villa (name in use 1849 – 69); Phayrecot (name in use 1867 – 83); Nightingale House (name in use 1917 – 19)
Heath Lodge (name in use 1868 to present)
Kingsmuir Hotel: Kingsmuir (name in use 1885 to present)
Burston House (name in use 1886 to present): St Anne's Nursery (College) (1) (name in use 1909 – 12)
Tresmere (name in use 1918 to present): Selkirk Villa (name in use 1837 – 1917)
Apsley Lodge (name in use 1873 to present): Apsley Villa (name in use 1844 – 73)

Pittville Circus Road

Berkeley House: Gwernant Villa (name in use 1861 – 1950+)
Askham Court: Shirley House (name in use 1862 – 1950+); Southam Lawn (name in use 1851); Southam Villa (name in use 1861)
Fairhavens Court: Balgowan House (name in use 1859 – 1902); Balgowan Lodge (name in use 1859 – 60); Northerwood (name in use 1903 – 1946+)
Star Court: Prestwich Lodge (name in use 1858 – 1963+)
Cotswold Lodge (name in use 1859 to present): Cotswold Villa (1) (name in use 1857 – 60)
Cotswold Grange Hotel: Cotswold Grange (name in use 1848 – 1950+)
Queensholme (name in use 1867 to present)
Oakbank (name in use 1886 to present)
Lansdown House: East Hayes (name in use 1844 – 1950+)
Tally-ho (name in use 1944 – 5; precise location north of Pittville Circus Road uncertain); see also Tally-ho Cottage (name in use 1944 – 5)
Homespring House: Deanwood House (name in use 1891 – 1938); Vallombrosa (name in use 1848 – 90)
Byron Court: Sunnyside (name in use 1874 – 1950+); Pengwern College Annexe (name in use 1926 – 38)
Pengwern: Pengwern College (name in use 1901 – 40)
Day Nursery, Berkhamstead School: Beechmount (name in use 1905 – 50+)
Worcester House (name in use 1895 to present)
The Gryphons (name in use 1888 to present)
Haddo (name in use 1888 to present)
Carlton House (name in use 1937 to present): Prestbury Villa (name in use 1869 – 1932), Carlton (name in use 1926 – 50+)
Kingswood House: Moultondale (name in use 1881 – 1950+)
Irving House (1): Strathdurn (name in use 1870 – 1950+)
Irving House (2): Acton Lodge (name in use 1873 – 92); Askham House (name in use 1892 – 1950+)
Holmdale (name in use 1880 to present)
Longville (name in use 1911 to present): Cornbrash House (name in use 1868 – 9); Cotswold Villa (2) (name in use 1870 – 1903)
North Hall (name in use 1923 to present): Berkeley Hall (name in use 1867 – 1926); Kirkella (name in use 1901 – 39); see also North Hall Cottage (name in use 1925 – 42)
St Anne's (name in use 1935 to present): Donore (name in use 1882 – 96); Garden Reach (name in use 1865 – 79); Inholmes (name in use 1897 – 1911); Pittville Court (2) (name in use 1896); Pittville Hall (name in use 1879 – 82 and also 1895 – 7); St Anne's Nursery College (2) (name in use 1912 – 35)
Glenfall Lawn (name in use 1866 to present)

Pittville Crescent

Parkview, 4 Pittville Crescent: Park View (name in use 1920 to present)
5 Pittville Crescent: Para (name in use 1909 – 16)
6 Pittville Crescent: Drummond House (name in use 1901 to present); Stanley Villa (name in use 1878 – 82)
Pittville Crescent Cottage (name in use 1901 – 41)
10 Pittville Crescent: Cornbrash Villa (1860); Lorraine Villa (name in use 1861 – 1903)
11 Pittville Crescent: Elton Villa (name in use 1861 – 1929)
Scoriton, 16 Pittville Crescent: Fern Lawn (name in use 1875 – 1913); Scoriton (name in use 1910 to present)

Pittville Crescent Lane

            7 Pittville Crescent Lane: Kingston Cottage (name in use 1904 to present)

Pittville Lawn

2 Pittville Lawn: Segrave House (name in use 1837 – 1950+); Rahere (name in use 1898 – 1950+)
4 Pittville Lawn: Napier House (name in use 1850 to present)
6 Pittville Lawn: Montagu Villa (name in use 1849 – 1950+)
8 Pittville Lawn: Lothian Villa (name in use 1855 – 1928); Merridale (name in use 1938 – 45+)
10 Pittville Lawn: Clarendon (name in use 1907 – 38)
15 Pittville Lawn: Drumholm (name in use 1889 – 1946+)
17 Pittville Lawn: Weston House (name in use 1845 to present)
19 Pittville Lawn: Northumberland Villa (name in use 1841 only)
St Catherine's, 21 Pittville Lawn: Berkeley Villa (name in use 1841 – 2; 1861); Pittville Nursing Home (name in use 1939 – 49)
23 Pittville Lawn: Roden House (name in use 1836 to present)
25 Pittville Lawn: Admington House (name in use 1839 – 72); Berkeley Court (name in use 1873 – 83); Berkeley House (name in use 1884 – 1950+)
27 Pittville Lawn: Kenilworth House (name in use 1837 to present)
39 Pittville Lawn: Pittville Lawn Villa (name in use 1841 – 1904); Pittville Lodge (name in use 1907 – 50+)
51 Pittville Lawn: Boclair (name in use 1904 – 12)
55 Pittville Lawn: Wyddrington House (name in use 1839 to present)
59 Pittville Lawn: Tracy House (name in use 1878 – 1922)
Regency Lodge, 69 Pittville Lawn: Heathfield Lodge (name in use 1841 – 1950+); Llyndda (name in use 1923 – 37); Regency Lodge (name in use 1938 to present); Upnor (1) (name in use 1916 – 25)
71 Pittville Lawn: Capel Court (name in use 1839 – 58); Malden Court (name in use 1858 to present)
79 Pittville Lawn: Ellingham House (name in use 1841 to present)
83 Pittville Lawn: Dorset Villa (name in use 1843 to present); Axholme (name in use 1911 – 24), Dorset House (name in use 1925 – 50+)
91 Pittville Lawn, Lake House (name in use 1911 to present): Lake View (name in use 1882 – 1925)
92 Pittville Lawn: Boclair (name in use 1934 – 42)
93 Pittville Lawn: Ravenhurst (name in use 1894 to present)

Portland Street

59 Portland Street: Maisonette (name in use 1833 – 1950+)
88 Portland Street: Cyntaf House (1833 – 85); Atherstone Lawn (1886 – 1907), Deerhurst (1915 to present)

Prestbury Road

2 Prestbury Road: Pittville Cottage (name in use 1833 – 1950+)
4 Prestbury Road: Segrave Cottage (name in use 1836 – 1901)
6 Prestbury Road: Leamington House (name in use 1835 – 1950+)
24 Prestbury Road: Saxony House (name in use 1897 – 1933)
25 Prestbury Road: Sudeley Arms (name in use 1850 to present)
32 Prestbury Road: Southend House (name in use 1846 to present)
35 Prestbury Road: Portland Cottage (name in use 1853 – 77)
56 Prestbury Road: Hollym (name in use 1911 – 20)
66 Prestbury Road: Trevellis House (name in use 1836 – 49)
73 Prestbury Road: Selkirk House (name in use 1847 to present)

Walnut Close

            24 Walnut Close: Edgbaston House Stables (name in use 1885 – 1919), Gate House Stables (name in use 1924 – 48+), Gate House Cottage (name in use 1930 – 47+)

Wellington Lane

Camden Villa (name in use 1834 to present)

Wellington Road

2 Wellington Road: Alwington Villa (name in use 1844 – 95); Sligo House (name in use 1897 to present); Tidmington House (name in use 1889 – 95)
Devonshire House: Halsey House (name in use 1873 – 1950+); Primrose Lawn (name in use 1833 – 87)
Pittville House (name in use 1835 to present)
21 Wellington Road/Evesham Road: Banchory Lodge (name in use 1837 – 41); Evesham House (name in use 1841 to present); also Little Evesham House (name in use 1935 to present)
Morcote (Villa), 26 Wellington Road: Morcote (name in use 1934 to present)

Wellington Square

Avondale House (name in use 1840 to present)
16 Wellington Square: Tregenna (name in use 1924 – 42)
17 Wellington Square: Rowanleigh (name in use 1878 – 1950+)
18 Wellington Square: Georgina Villa (name in use 1839 – 76); Cedar Villa (name in use 1873 – 94); Cedar Holme (name in use 1894 – 1934); Maitland Nursing Home (name in use 1936 – 45+)
19 Wellington Square: Wellington Villa (1) (name in use 1837 – 1917); Holmains (name in use 1904 – 22); Upnor (2) (name in use 1922 – 38)
Old Lodge (name in use 1941 to present): Flesk Lodge (name in use 1868 – 1939); Victoria Cottage (1856 – 7); Victoria Villa (name in use 1837 – 43); Wellington Cottage (name in use 1857 – 67); Wellington Villa (2) (name in use 1881)
Clive Lodge: Gothic Cottage (name in use 1851 – 68), Clive Lodge (name in use 1939 to present)
Wellington Lodge (name in use 1857 to present; Wellington Square): Victoria House (name in use 1841 – 60)
Cranley: The Aviary (name in use 1837 – 63); Cranley Lodge (name in use 1864 – 1950+)
Laurel Lodge (name in use 1835 to present)
Percy House (name in use 1845 to present)
Eastholme (name in use 1870 to present)
Westbury (name in use 1924 to present): Wellesley Villa (name in use 1841 – 83); Westwick (name in use 1859 – 62)
Wellington House: Edenham (name in use 1914 – 50+)
Wellington Lodge (name in use 1857 to present)
Wellesley House (name in use 1841 to present)
Daylesford (name in use 1919 to present); Westville (name in use 1877 – 1903)
Park House: Dover House (name in use 1874 – 96); Inver (name in use 1897 – 1910), Beckaford House (name in use 1913 – 90+)
Harwood House (name in use 1837 to present): Wellington Court (name in use 1889 – 1936); Kashmir Court (name in use 1925 – 35)
Glenmore Lodge (name in use 1836 to present)

West Approach Drive

Richmond: Bexley (name in use 1887 – 1917), Claremont (name in use 1907 – 19); Highbury (name in use 1913 – 15); Mount Sorrell (name in use 1931 – 48)
Beaufort/Beaufort House (name in use 1890 – 1928)
Cleeve House and Homewood: Dunboyne (name in use 1891 – 1913), Cleeve House (name in use 1914 to present)
Parkgate: Gundulf (name in use 1890 – 1901); Lorraine House (name in use 1902 – 63+)
Chaseley Lodge (name in use 1916 to present)

Westbourne Drive, off Pittville Circus Road

Westbourne House (name in use 1851 to present)

West Drive

Garden House (name in use 1933 to present)

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See also A. J. Campbell "Pittville Nursery Garden and the Ware Mortgage: A cautionary tale", in the Journal of the Cheltenham Local History Society, vol. 8 (1990-1).