Summary
Cheltenham is the most complete Regency town in Britain, on the edge of the Cotswolds about a hundred miles west of London. Most people come for the March racing or one of the arts festivals, but the town itself, built around the Promenade and Montpellier, is the real find.
Four arts festivals keep it busy from spring to autumn, and it makes the natural base for a Cotswolds weekend.
Cheltenham is the largest town in Gloucestershire, and most visitors arrive for one of two things: the racing in March or the arts festivals that run from April to October. Both are worth the trip, but neither is the reason the town is worth a second look. Cheltenham is the most complete Regency spa town in Britain, and the architecture alone repays a weekend.
A short history
It was a small market town until a mineral spring was found in a meadow in 1716. The spa trade built slowly until George III visited in 1788 and gave it the royal seal, after which Cheltenham boomed: Regency terraces, classical pump rooms, formal gardens and wide tree-lined avenues went up over the next sixty years. The spa fashion faded by the late Victorian era, but the town never industrialised, so the Regency stock survived almost whole. That is why it still looks the way it does.
The Promenade and Montpellier
The Promenade is the spine of the town, a long Regency boulevard of shops, restaurants and gardens running the length of the centre. The Cavendish House department store is its best-known name, and Imperial Gardens, the formal Victorian flower beds in front of the Town Hall, sit partway along; in summer the bandstand concerts make them the centre of everything.
Montpellier, just to the west, is the smartest district. Its Montpellier Walk is a curved Regency parade where carved caryatid figures stand in for pillars between the shopfronts, and the cafés, boutiques and restaurants behind them are the independent, design-led end of the town. The small formal Montpellier Gardens sit quietly behind the Walk.
Pittville and the Pump Room
North of the centre, Pittville was laid out in the 1820s around the Pittville Pump Room, finished in 1830 and still the finest building in town. It is open most days, the mineral spring still runs, and the brave can taste the water, the flavour of which is best described as distinctive. The surrounding Pittville Park has a lake and boating, and a Regency garden corridor, the Long Garden, links it back to the Promenade through some of the most photographed parts of Cheltenham.
Where to eat and drink
Cheltenham punches well above its size at the table, a hangover from the racing and the festivals. Le Champignon Sauvage on Suffolk Road is the long-standing Michelin name, the Daffodil nearby fills a theatrical 1920s cinema, and Bhoomi Kitchen is among the most praised Indian restaurants in the country. The drinking leans wine and cocktails over beer, with the smart bars clustered in Montpellier and a redeveloped Victorian Brewery Quarter pulling the rest together for an evening that moves between several rooms.
The four festivals
- Jazz (late April / early May)A broad, informal line-up across the Town Hall, clubs, restaurants and outdoor stages.
- Science (early June)Talks, family days and lab open days for a week, fittingly for the home of GCHQ.
- Music (late June / early July)The classical and chamber festival, staged in churches, the Town Hall and the smaller rooms.
- Literature (early October)One of the largest literary festivals in Europe: hundreds of talks across ten days.
Day trips and the Cotswolds
- Broadway (20 minutes)The picture-postcard Cotswolds village: honey stone, antique shops, smart hotels.
- Stow-on-the-Wold (30 minutes)A market square unchanged in shape since the seventeenth century.
- Bourton-on-the-Water (30 minutes)The Windrush stream running through the centre, plus a model village.
- Sudeley Castle (15 minutes)Catherine Parr's burial place, with a private chapel and Tudor gardens.
- Tewkesbury and Gloucester (15 to 20 minutes)Two great churches: Tewkesbury Abbey, and Gloucester Cathedral's Harry Potter cloisters.
- Further afieldOxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath all sit within about an hour for a longer day out.
When to go
Outside the March racing and the October Literature Festival, Cheltenham is a quiet country town, and May, June and September are the best months for the gardens and the weather. Every festival pushes the town towards sold-out, so the earlier the dates are fixed the better. The grandest rooms in town, the Queens Hotel on the Promenade among them, and the country houses scattered through the surrounding hills make a weekend here, and arranging the base and the moving around is the sort of thing we take off your hands.
Come for the racing or one of the festivals by all means, but give the town a day of its own. Cheltenham was built to be looked at, and it still is.
Sian Jones
Sport Events Operations Manager
Sport Events Operations Manager at Imperial Corporate Events. She’s the one on the ground making sure your day runs, from the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to Royal Ascot.
