OurTown Spring 2024

Town

An unmissable opportunity to give Cheltenham a true town centre

A central landmark of our town for 200 years, the future of the very large Cavendish House site must form a key part of Cheltenham’s continuing attraction. Inside, we present our idea to give the town a vibrant centre.

Cavendish House is a huge and now vacant block of retail space in the town centre. Demand for prime retail space has shrunk since the Covid pandemic and now towns all over the UK –including Cheltenham – need to find ways to reduce the amount of vacant space in their town centres.

What’s in OurTown this time

The average gestation time for major town centre developments is around eight years. So to avoid the potential blight on the rest of the Prom that may result from a large Cavendish Houseshaped vacancy, the owners, our council and all the town centre stakeholders need to take action now.

But we need imagination as well as commercial common sense to be applied. We believe that finding the right solution cannot be left to just the owners and Cheltenham Borough Council. We all must play a role in determining how our town centre will look for perhaps the next 200 years. ●

The opportunity to create a new town centre square pages 2-3 ● Town Centre Manifesto update pages 4-5

progress picture gallery pages 6-7

The opportunity of a generation

Cavendish House has dominated the lower Promenade for 200 years and been a prominent feature of life in the town for all that time. Its closure is a real loss to Cheltenham. But its passing creates a unique opportunity to transform the heart of town. Cheltenham Civic Society’s Planning Forum presents our initial vision.

What Cheltenham town centre lacks is a focal point. But the demise of Cav House creates the possibility – which may never come again – of creating a grand town centre square.

A new ‘Cavendish Square’

The Civic Society’s vision is for a new public space that unites Regent Street and the Promenade.

Added to the pedestrianised part of the Promenade, this will provide a magnificent central area of 4,0005,000 square metres. It might be called ‘Cavendish Square’ to honour the prestigious store it will replace.

We can realise this ambition either by demolishing the existing Cav House buildings entirely, or perhaps reusing some of them.

In their place, Cavendish Square would link the Promenade with Regent Street. Each of its four sides will be dominated by a handsome building, thus:

f The Everyman Theatre, with Matcham’s distinctive Edwardian façade, will be the main feature of the south-east side.

f Facing it, on the far side of the square, will be the existing Regency terrace edging the pedestrianised, lower section of the Promenade.

f On the north-east side will be the imposing former County Court building (built c. 1870). Alongside it could be a new commercial and residential development of shops with flats above. This might be four or five storeys high.

f On the south-west side will be a

new Civic building, a prestigious home for Cheltenham Borough Council, relocated from its current position further up the Promenade. It, too, could be four storeys high. All the existing Grade II Listed buildings would be retained, and their settings greatly enhanced.

The Civic Society believes there is a unique opportunity to create a truly magnificent scheme that will give Cheltenham what it lacks: a town centre worthy of the town.

What would happen to the existing Cav House?

While the clearance of all existing buildings from the site would make it easier to realise this vision, there are a couple of possible alternatives here.

First, the existing Regency frontage to Regent Street, though badly compromised by its inclusion within Cavendish House, could be partially restored, or rebuilt to recreate a Regency-type frontage of small shops with flats above – three storeys highwith an opening to frame the view to the theatre from Cavendish Square.

Second, there may be merit in retaining some of the newer parts of Cavendish House in this scheme, where they can be adapted to fit within a master plan for the square. Detailed examination of the structures would be needed to establish how practical this would be.

Designing the square

Cavendish Square would need trees to provide shade in a warmer climate. There may be green spaces too, so that the overall effect is welcoming.

High-quality surfacing, well-designed street furniture and public art would all be essential to give this place the prestige it deserves. Perhaps, the Hare & Minotaur could be moved to the junction between the Promenade and the square itself.

Such a new Cavendish Square should be a focus for people, hosting events, such as street markets, exhibitions, outdoor theatre and a place of assembly for meetings – perhaps even a “Speakers’ Corner”.

With several cafés nearby, it will be easy to create continental-style, eating-out areas, especially on the part of Regent Street near the theatre.

It would become the heart of life in our town – and come alive in different ways at Christmas, Race Week and during the various festivals.

How to make it happen

Cav House is owned by Canada Life, We can expect them to want to maximise their investment.

With its extra height, this scheme will provide them with income-earning floor space for a mix of uses,

We must act quickly

The Council should lead a public debate about what could be done.

Also, they should up their ambition: Cheltenham deserves an outcome that is driven more by the public interest than private profit. ●

CREATING A VIBRANT NEW TOWN SQUARE

Three sides of the new square would be flanked by prestigious listed buildings. The fourth side would be created by a new civic HQ for CBC – enabling the Council to sell its existing building.

THE EXISTING TOWN CENTRE LACKS A FOCAL POINT CLARENCE

HIGHSTREET (PEDESTRIANISEDAREA) M&S

1 CBC Civic Centre

2 Shops & cafés with flats over

3 Commercial offices

4 Regency terraces – uses as 2 above

5 Offices/hotel/residential uses RODNEYROAD

Time for a review of our Town Centre Manifesto

In 2021, CCS published our first manifesto for the town centre. It called for both councils (CBC and GCC) to work closely together and take better care of Cheltenham town centre. The manifesto –though unpopular with some politicians – achieved a reasonable level of success. That was two years ago and now is an appropriate time to review progress and re-set our goals.

Our Town Centre Manifesto (TCM 22) was a first for us. It was born from a need to get the local authorities – Cheltenham Borough Council (CBC) and Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) – to listen to the public. They were reluctant to engage and to place the public realm and the town centre’s appearance and health at the centre of their thinking.

Politics

We stress that Cheltenham Civic Society (CCS) is – as a registered charity – non party-political. But we do operate in a political environment and we need to be savvy in the way we do so. We felt we had to hold all politicians to account, regardless of their political colour. The manifesto created an opportunity to get our points across, but we did not know how it would be received, nor its impact.

Demands

We drew up over 20 points initially, which we then whittled down to a nice round ten. They set expectations for both GCC and CBC. Of the ten points, seven were for for CBC and five for GCC (with some overlaps).

Stretch

We sought to apply ‘stretch targets’ to the manifesto by pushing the councils to meet stringent deadlines. We reasoned that the councils had already had years to address these problems, so our timelines would chivvy them up.

Reception

We launched TCM22 in March 2022. It would be an understatement to say it

caused a stir – because it had drawn attention to all the consistent failings and exposed the lack of diligence to improve the town centre.

Results

Of the ten demands, five have been addressed and, although the stretch timelines were not met, several other points have been advanced.

After four years of our badgering, CBC finally took Section 215 action against the owners of the former Sports Direct shop on The Strand.

CBC also took steps to hand over the pavement that they had laid outside John Lewis for adoption by GCC.

Darren Knight, the Executive Director of Place and Communities, was tasked

to solve the problem. Sadly, his efforts came to a halt when he left CBC.

Cambray Place, which had featured so prominently in our campaigns to stop the spread of tarmac cowpats, was finally resurfaced. GCC missed our stretch deadline by four months but they did a tidy job. Sadly, some slabs were soon dug up again and replaced by the inevitable tarmac cowpats. And, more than eight months on, we’re still awaiting proper reinstatement.

GCC also addressed our concerns over the Promenade’s paving. We dissuaded the council from laying tarmac down its length and instead managed to convince them to install bollards to prevent through traffic.

These tarmac cowpats soon spoiled the resurfacing of Cambray Place.

CBC contacted us to discuss our concerns over inappropriate street furniture and plans to do better. That discussion is ongoing.

Impact

Many other civic societies across the UK have now followed our lead and issued their own manifestos. At the local level, this reinforced the strong influence of amenity societies as they try to improve their local areas. ●

With new local elections in the offing, we now launch an updated manifesto to guide our councils and all other town centre stakeholders over the next two years. f f f

OUR TOWN CENTRE MANIFESTO FOR 2024-2025

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Organise it! Adopt best practice for town centre management to deliver improvement and accountability.

f Radically improve town centre management by establishing a Town Centre Forum, so that public concerns can be heard and acted upon.

f Town centre inspections by councillors, officers and Forum members to maintain diligent, continuous oversight and effective, timely remediation.

f Create a transparent performance management system to demonstrate improvements and measure satisfaction.

Repair it! Create a simple improvement plan for the town centre, focusing on inexpensive actions that will clean up the appearance of the area.

f Remove all superfluous street furniture and clutter – less is more!

f Resurface The Strand. Reinstate all tarmac infills. Replace all broken slabs and stone flags. Adopt the John Lewis paving.

f Create a public realm design guide, including paving and street furniture. Then stick to it!

f Implement a preventative and reactive maintenance regime, to include repair and painting of street furniture and paving.

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Clean it! Implement a robust and thorough cleaning regime.

f Put in place a proper street cleaning contract with Ubico.

f Agree detailed cleaning performance standards and enforce them.

f Address fly tipping, beggars’ paraphernalia and graffiti.

Tidy it!

Manage the waste management.

f Collect all waste from the rear of premises where feasible. Limit time on the street where it is not feasible.

f Prohibit waste being left on the street at any time.

f Control and improve commercial waste collections; encourage the use of one operator.

f Design a bin screening plan to hide or disguise town centre bins.

f Fine offenders.

Own it! Instil a sense of civic pride.

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f Promote personal responsibility to drive out littering, vandalism and damage, and to encourage the reporting of problems.

f Businesses to take responsibility for the public realm outside their premises.

f Run competitions for the best kept areas/displays.

f Plant more trees and greenery.

f Arrange adoption of tree pits and plant them.

Real progress with Parmoor

This gallery of photos shows the progress made by our builders up to the end of March. The saga of our planning application eventually came to an end in early February, when Cheltenham Borough Council finally granted planning permission. Leckhampton Builders have since been hard at work preparing the building for its restoration and change of use.

The interior partitions have all now been ripped out. So you can see the actual size of our new meeting room for the first time. The central staircase will stay in place for a little while yet, as it provides the easiest way to bring all the rubbish down and out to the back.

Some charring from the 1926 fire – see OT28 – can be seen on the wooden beam at the top of this first floor window.

Andrew Booton inspects the work from the lower ground level.

The structural steelwork supporting the roof is in good condition, as are all the timber rafters and felt.

All the debris is separated and bagged up for recycling then carried down to the lower ground floor ready to be collected from the access lane at the back.

It’s now possible to visualise the good sizes of the two 1-bed apartments to be created on the first floor.

Signage produced by Art Works Design ready to go on the front fence.

This space – minus the steel upright –will become our boardroom.

Save the Daffodil!

Chair of the CCS Planning Forum, Adrian Phillips – with historical research by Stuart Manton – calls for the Daffodil to be listed.

I am sure that many readers of OurTown have enjoyed a meal or drink at the Daffodil restaurant (18-20 Suffolk Parade), but how many of you went there when it was a cinema before it closed in 1963?

One person who did was Anne Regan, who told me: “Front of house there was a fully uniformed doorman in blue and gold. My sister and I saw ‘The Red Shoes’ (1948) and my mother had to get the doorman (Fred, I think) to fetch us out after sitting through it twice! The tiny ticket offices were in use, lovely red velvet curtains over the inside doorways and of course the beautiful Art Deco daffodils in the foyer. Such happy days!”

Well, it may never again be possible for people to have such memories of happy days visiting the Daffodil for a

film or a meal. The restaurant closed a few years ago, and the owners have now secured planning consent for the building to be used for a range of uses.

place. Already, the neighbouring shop (no. 21 Suffolk Parade), which is part of the original Daffodil development, has been given permission for conversion to residential use.

It might be as a new restaurant or even a new cinema, but it could just as easily become a gym or a crèche. And the owner could also apply to demolish it and propose flats or offices in its

It is these threats that have spurred the Civic Society to ask Historic England to list the structure quickly, so that any future use of 18-21 Suffolk Parade has to be assessed in light of its historic and architectural importance. It is ‘locally indexed’ but our experience is that this non-statutory sort of protection is of very little or no value. Only proper listing can pretty well ensure that the Daffodil survives. So, what’s the case for listing?

The Daffodil Picture House opened on 5 October 1922. It was the first purpose-built cinema in the town, showing Mary Carr in ‘Thunderclap’.

Thus it was built before the Cinematograph Act of 1927, the arrival of talking pictures in 1928 and the creation of big cinema chains, whose large picture palaces became such a feature of Britain in the 1930s.

The architect was Leonard William Barnard (1870-1951), who joined the practice of Protheroe and Phillott. This firm had previously been John Middleton’s – Middleton being noted for several fine Victorian churches in town. The practice survives to this day as Eric Cole Architects.

Barnard did a lot of work on churches, schools and memorials in and around Cheltenham, and in Wales, nearly always using the gothic style. But for the Daffodil he chose Art Deco, the international decorative style that was popular between the wars. It provided that atmosphere of jazzy modernity and chic elegance that was associated with films.

The Daffodil is a modest expression of Art Deco for a humble but pioneering place of entertainment. It incorporates

some of the key characteristics: intense colours (on the exterior), geometric shapes (e.g. the brick panels on the façade), stylised images and recurring motifs (i.e. the daffodil motif used throughout in the form of gilded reliefs, tiled floors and engraved windows). All of this offered a touch of glamour and sophistication for ordinary people. The Daffodil could not compete with the rise of TV after the war. It became a bingo hall and then a furniture store. It looked very down at heel until the Daffodil Restaurant opened in 1998. This was a triumphant re-use of the former cinema: the original Art Deco features were saved, and the interior was brilliantly adapted to its new use with décor that celebrated the golden age of cinema. They even copied the idea of “courting seats” from the original seating in the cinema. The restaurant was very successful, until labour shortages and Covid killed it off in 2022.

In making our case for listing, we argued that the Daffodil was important as a rare surviving memorial to the great age of cinema: quite small-scale compared to the nationwide chains like Gaumont, Odeon and ABC picture palaces, but authentic and spared the wholesale modernisation which was ‘done to’ many pre-war cinemas. It’s a charming example of the Art Deco style with a slightly quirky insistence on the use of the daffodil motif throughout. Although the cinema

closed many years ago, the building was rescued by its uncommonly sensitive conversion to a restaurant. In recent years, it has become an important venue for Cheltenham’s Jazz and Literary Festivals.

Along with no. 21 Suffolk Parade, the Daffodil sits well in the street. Within the wider Suffolks Character Area, it is an important component, contributing to its special character. It is Cheltenham’s last link with the golden age of cinema (as all our other purpose-built cinemas have now gone). It was sad when the cinema closed, but even sadder when its doors closed for the second time.

The Daffodil has had a fascinating past. We are seeking its urgent listing because it is potentially under threat and because listing should encourage a sympathetic owner to give it a new lease of life, while respecting its special qualities and unusual social history. ●

LATEST NEWS

Disappointingly, our listing bid for the Daffodil failed.

Historic England has rejected our request that they list the Daffodil. They say that “although clearly a cherished local landmark, the Daffodil falls short of the level of architectural and historic interest needed to merit listing in the national context, but is clearly of local interest, which is reflected in its local listing, and inclusion in a conservation area.”

This is a sad outcome but we will redouble our efforts to make sure that the Daffodil survives. We will make the most of the local listing, though it is a weak protection. We are working with the Council to update and strengthen local listing generally – this may be a test case for how we can use this form of protection to save valuable and loved local buildings like the Daffodil.

Inside the Daffodil Picture House in the 1930s. Note the ‘courting seats’ beside the gangway.

Could do better?

CCS Planning Forum member, Cathy Presland, highlights the key element of our consultation response – which we submitted in February – to the Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury Strategic and Local Plan.

The joint consultation questionnaire by the three district councils and the county council asks for responses to a series of 30 questions – which the CCS Planning Forum answered while also trying to stay within our area of interest and expertise,

While there were many positive elements in the draft Plan, members of the Forum thought that the most interesting question was “What’s missing or underplayed?” – to which we responded with these six areas:

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The limits of planning and the need for complementary regulation and facilitation (e.g. building regs) in order to achieve effective ‘planning’ outcomes. The lack of a joined-up system is evident in many of the individual applications we review as a Forum.

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The balance between new and existing development. The vast majority of our existing urban fabric will still be with us over the plan period, however the consultation document seems to focus more on new development rather than retro-fitting and adaptation.

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The economic and cultural value of heritage. ‘Regency Cheltenham’: it’s on the signs but it does not seem be a central tenet of the plan. Of course the

To learn more, visit the SLP website: https://strategiclocalplan.org

consultation document extends to other towns and rural areas. But while CCS is concerned with the whole of our town, the Forum felt that the consultation document treated heritage as an add-on, and perhaps an irritating one at that, rather than the foundation of a thriving, socially and economically vibrant town.

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The importance of nature recovery. There is no support for joined-up thinking between national plans, nor even regulatory standards such as ‘building with nature’, and we feel this is a significant missed opportunity.

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Bringing nature into our towns. There are some positive statements in the SLP but the Planning Forum’s members felt these could be more

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ambitious, given that there is strong evidence for the economic and social benefits of nature in urban areas.

The potential for working, genuinely, with civic and local groups. We include CCS in this, but there are other stakeholders.

Consultation or engagement should take place at an early stage rather than when plans are quite far advanced.

Genuine involvement means seeking ideas from community groups like ours at the outset rather than being asked to comment on a fait accompli.

CCS Planning Forum’s full response to the SLP consultation questionnaire can be found on the Downloads page of our website: https://cheltcivicsoc.org/

While this stage of the consultation is now closed, there will be a second round. The Planning Forum will endeavour to inform members on how to engage with that.

The 131 tents saga looks set to continue for some time yet. We were led to believe that the tents would be removed after Race Week. But we’ve since heard that 131 is going to appeal again. We’ll just have to see against what – while these slowly degrading tents continue to obscure several of our town’s best Regency buildings.

Meanwhile, this small building in the cemetery is now set to enjoy a new lease of life. Thanks to the sterling efforts of CCS member, Colin Smith, we have surpassed our fundraising target and the work to create a permanent exhibition for the 22 remaining battlefield crosses from the First World War is now underway. We’ll bring you more news in the coming months.

GCC’s partner, Connected Kerb, has finally begun to install on-street EV chargers across the county. About 130 of the “1,000 in three years” promised by GCC two years ago have now been installed. These two in Sherborne Street were blocked by non-EV cars when we took this photo. But the main problem will be the pricing. At 50p per kWh, it’s more than petrol per mile – so this initiative is unlikely to be the real gamechanger that GCC may think it is.

Circumspice 14

The world moves on, but clues, traces or fossils are often left behind to remind us of what once was. Where is this short flight of steps? Of which grand structure is it a remnant? Rig

The answers to this mini quiz* can be found on the Society’s website: cheltcivicsoc.org/category/news *Unfortunately there are no prizes!

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