Cheltenham: finally seeing the Simona I knew

The last of Simona's books that I read was the one that caused me the most dismay as a child, her 'biography' of my home town Cheltenham. Why the distress? It is dedicated to my parents and my sister gets a mention in the acknowledgements for her good behaviour while Simona was on her research visits. And me? No mention at all; completely absent from the family picture. The explanation that I hadn't been born at the time the book was written gave me no succour and I believe it may have been the cause of some of my cries of "it's not fair" that so annoyed my father that he introduced a fine every time the phrase was uttered.

However, now I am grown and (hopefully) more accepting of such things, I actually felt a rush of pride seeing my grandmother as the author, a handwritten dedication to my grandfather as well as the aforementioned mentions of my parents and sister; this was a real family affair as well as being about 'our' town. 

I was looking forward to this book as I knew my knowledge about Cheltenham was not as good as it should be and there were many times when I felt incredibly stupid! How could I not have realised that Dean Close (as in the school) and Francis Close Hall (as in the university campus) were one and the same person? Or how had I failed to make the connection between all those bits of town with 'Well' in their title and the spa water on which it made its name? In my lifetime the only place you could sample the spa water was at Pittville Pump Room, but I probably ought to have known that there were other sources of the water during the height of Cheltenham's Regency vogue. 

I have spent most of my adult life working in the public health field, and for six years specifically in tobacco control, so discovering I came from a town whose fame was not originally for its 'health giving' spa waters but for its illegal tobacco growing is quite an irony! The shelter provided by being nestled in the valley below the Cotswolds that still makes it a successful farming region gave it an ideal climate for cultivating tobacco, putting the town into dispute with the authorities, nearby neighbours in ports such as Bristol that made money as tobacco importers, and with the growers in Virginia and Bermuda. The Civil War gave the tobacco farmers respite from the legal challenges, but they remained belligerent and resisted all attempts to destroy the crops for more than 30 years after the war ended and gave up cultivation only when the price had fallen to a level where the crop was no longer profitable. 

The book gives a good concise history of the discovery and growing fashion of the spa waters, encouraged by the visits of 18th Century 'celebrities' like Handel and Dr Johnson. The location of the wells - and there were several - informed the development of the town's design. Tree-lined walkways and eventually the Promenade were constructed to provide the wealthy visitors an attractive route through to the various pump rooms. Of course, the visit of George III was what really put Cheltenham and its waters on the map and its growing popularity led to King George suggesting that taking of the waters be banned on a Sunday in order to preserve the supply.

The lovely Royal Crescent obscured by Royal Well Bus Station.

For me, though, the two most interesting aspects of this book are the chapter about the Town Plan and its proposals for Cheltenham's development during the 1970s, and how Simona's personality comes across. The Town Plan as described sounds so positive, with the old St James's station site being recommended to have a vast underground bus and coach station, removing the ugly Royal Well bus station and making the beautiful regency splendour of Royal Crescent visible once again. On top of the bus station would be a conference centre, hotel, some shops and offices, with the aim of creating an area that would be lively at all time, and avoid it simply being reams of office blocks leaving the area dead during the evening. 40+ years later the bus station still blots Royal Well, albeit not quite the concrete monstrosity of my youth, and St James's is mainly office buildings alongside a Waitrose, and definitely not the lively go-to area envisaged.   

In reading Simona's other books she either retained a neutral authorial voice, or did not come across as the woman I knew. The exuberant youth of Pigtails and Pernod and the unbridled passion for Vaughan Williams never fully came across in her later years. The Simona I knew was a woman of her era and class, never really demonstrating her emotions. She was also, to put it bluntly, a snob, which with hindsight is a source of amusement (in fact I responded only today to my father's announcement that he had been shopping in Tesco with her trademark 'oh!' response of distaste), but it could be quite embarrassing at times when in her company. We finally see this Simona in Cheltenham, and she is writ loud, as the following quotes show. 

“This was the Cheltenham of the young and their fast increasing families...blocks of flats (mercifully few and not too high) and semi-detached villas (innumerable) with new gardens all to often decorated with gnomes...”

“The buses are frequent...all of them seem caked with dust, in which the enormous child-population has written caustic comments.”

“Coronation Square, full of supermarkets and Do-It-Yourself shops, has the impermanent air of a frontier town in a new country; buildings that look like piles of matchboxes....On a fine day after school it seems as if every house in the streets around has half a dozen children, all the smaller ones on tricycles in the middle of the roads, while the larger ones busy themselves vandalizing the phone boxes...”

I have now finished the published books, but there are two more manuscripts to read and lots of papers, acting memorabilia and photos to explore, so I'm not finishing here. I like the Simona I've discovered in her earlier works, particularly in Pigtails, so its prequel/sequel is a treat to come!