Month: March 2019

Cheltenham Festival winners, 12-15 March 2019

Despite high winds and intermittent heavy rain caused by storm Gareth, Friends of Pittville fielded a team of eighteen volunteers to help run the Albemarle Gate car park. A rota was organised by Chris Archibald and able support from Henry Williams saw that the going was good  throughout race week. This event raised £3680 which goes towards new FoP projects and ongoing maintenance. A special thank you to all the helpers.

Pittville Pump Room roofline statues

 

We have the final word on these three statues from a founder member of Friends of Pittville, Judy Langhorn. Many people think that the left hand statue (viewed from the front) is holding a baseball bat, put there by the American troops who were stationed in the Pump Room during WW2. This is not true. Full story here The Pump Room statues. A postscript: the Borough Council recently replaced the 1960s ‘bat’ with another, also made of wood, which certainly does look like a large baseball bat!

Pump room and lake

Now 14,000 histories

John Simpson and Steve Blake, with a few of the 80 strong audience

There was a fantastic turnout for John Simpson’s presentation for Cheltenham Local History Society at St Luke’s Hall on 5 March.  John talked about the award-winning website, Pittville History Works, explaining how the searchable database was built up to over 14,000 items. It covers every person and building in the original Estate from 1842 to 1939, with stories of individuals ranging from those in the women’s suffrage movement to the First World War to the slave trade. Historian Steve Blake also gave a quick update on his planned, more detailed, research into the builders of Pittville’s houses.

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