Wednesday 16 April – The Origins of Parish Road Names

A packed house at our April meeting to hear six members of the CPLHG Committee present the findings of their recent research into the history behind the road names across Chalford Parish.  Hilary Burgess, Roger Carnt, Jim Bocock, John Dawson, Camilla Boon and Pete Drover took it in turns to present different sections, each highlighting their own area of research.

We learned that while some road names may indeed go back to early times, e.g. Abnash from the original Bisley Manor tything of Avenis which became Abnesse (multiple spellings exist!), the census and electoral roles show us that until relatively recent times it was not the norm to use road names in addresses locally.  The introduction of post codes, the building of multiple cul de sacs and mini estates, the construction of the Manor Farm Estate and the requirements of the emergency services to be able to locate places quickly, all led to a significant number of new road names being adopted from the 1970s onwards.  The Parish Council minutes show how some of these were selected in the 1980s and 90s, including those for Manor Farm. They also show that great discussion was often held to determine exactly where a road started and finished.

Among those road names discussed were

• Dr Middleton’s Road, named after a Chalford GP from the 40s-60s who had an unfortunate reputation for drink driving, but was also well regarded in his profession locally
• Sturmyes Road (which once had two alternate spellings on signs at each end!), from John Sturmy, whose Farm (now Pontins) became “Sturmy’s Court”, the ruling Manor for the southern part of Bisley Parish after a disagreement with the local Bisley Manor Court in the 1600s.
• Keble Road for Thomas Keble, both Senior and Junior having served as Vicars of the Bisley Parish, although many might have preferred Pyddoke Road after France Lynch’s own first curate who put up much of the money for the Church.
• Coppice Hill, for the practice of coppicing the hazel, which was used to make frames for the “tenters” on which cloth was stretched
• The “unofficial” names Farmer Gardiner’s Lane and Butler’s Hill for roads on the edge of France Lynch named after former inhabitants.
• Burcombe Road and Burcombe Way, used (with some interesting spellings on old maps!) since at least the 1880s. Combe means valley and it can be clearly seen on relief maps, but where the full name came from isn’t known.
• Watery Lane – an obvious one as water flows down it pretty much 24/7
• Silver Street. We’d had numerous ideas for this one in the week before the talk – water on the road, the Latin word for wood “Silva”, a name that sounded nice in other local towns and Chalford just adopted it, or possibly the appearance of the “white” surface due to the limestone before the tarmac came.  No idea which is right but it was fun to discuss!
• Accommodation Lane, clearly marked and described on the enclosure map as an “occupation road”, so likely to mean accommodation as in “living quarters” in this case.
• The Frith appears on the Corpus Christi map of 1603 as Ye Frithe.  Frith means wood, so Frith Wood is a tautology!
• Beech Lane (Brownshill) is shown on the enclosure map with a beech tree clearly marked on the map (sadly the original is no longer there)
• Pudney Pie Lane has several naming theories such as for the pig doors that open into it (pigs being made into pies?) or possibly as a slang word for donkey droppings. A very plausible idea suggested from the audience on the evening was that the shop was at one end of the lane and the bakers at the other, so maybe the “pudding pies” were transported along the lane.
• Brantwood Road appears to have been named after Brantwood House (which was formerly called Alma Villa), which had been a doctor’s surgery and then (in the 1950s / 60s) a restaurant. It was probably named after Brantwood House in Cumbria where one of the former owners came from.
• Skiveralls is first found in the Bisley Court Rolls in the 1500s and the house of the same name dates from around mid-1600, however the origin of the name is a mystery.
• Randalls Green is named after the Randall family who owned a mill in the area in the early 1700s. The name may also have referred to the adjacent drying area.
• Rack Hill is named for the racks (tenters) that were constructed here to stretch out the cloth for drying.
• Toadsmoor (and its various spellings!) is said by Mary Rudd, a local historian writing in the 1930s to have originated from “Tods More”, where a Tod is a young fox and More / Moor simply means open ground.  Toad could also refer to one of the common inhabitants of the valley’s stream edges. On one map it is spelled Frodmore, but this is probably an error.
• Commercial Road did indeed have a number of businesses sited on it including The Fleece Inn, the Post Office and Gardiner’s Stores, so this could be the origin of the name.
• St Mary’s was named after a chantry in Minchinhampton Parish
• Belvedere once had a classical style statue of Apollo (The Belvedere Apollo is a famous ancient sculpture) although it vanished during the development and its whereabouts are now unknown

The road names on the Manor Farm Estate can be split into four categories

• Generic “country sounding” names such as Bluebell, Cuckoo, Lark, Hilltop, Foxes, Old Common
• Those named after places. Tanglewood after the old house in Brownshill that was renamed Templewood in the 1920s and destroyed in a place crash in 1946. Sezincote and Hidcote after well known Manor Houses. Farmcote possibly after a hamlet in Winchcombe that was mentioned in the Domesday Book. Those named after a View that can be (sometimes only just!) seen from them – Lypiatt, Burleigh, Ferris Court.  Stonecote is a mystery, although Cote means cottage so it could just be a traditional sounding name!
• People.  John Dorington was the “Lord of the Manor” at Lypiatt who was largely responsible for enclosure of the Bisley Common (where the estate is built) in the 1860s. John Sibree ran a Boys boarding school at Bussage House in the late 1800s and into the early part of the 20th century.  Dorothea Beale was the niece of the famous headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies college and ran a girls boarding school at Bussage House from 1912 until 1937.  Lionel Padin and Stanley Gardiner who both served in WW2 and then returned to Chalford to live started the collection of photos and slides that led to the publication of their many local history photo books and which now form the basis of the collection passed on by Mike Mills to CPLHG, which we use at our slide shows. Munday Close is named after a former Parish Council Chairman and Heavens Way after Gerald Heaven a former Parish Council Clerk.

The newest road name in the Parish is Sycamore Grove in Chalford. The name for this was suggested by CPLHG as the houses were built on the old football pitch which used to be known as The Sycamores.

Altogether a fascinating evening with many questions still unanswered but lots of food for thought.

Wednesday 19 March – England’s Oldest Showman – Steve Blake

At our March meeting, Steve Blake recounted the story of John Bellamy (1808-1893) once described as “England’s oldest showman” as he was still “on the road” with his exhibition of model buildings in the 1890s, shortly before his death at age 85!

Steve explained that he first became aware of Bellamy and his work when one of his model buildings – of Pitville Pump Rooms in Cheltenham – along with a portrait of Bellamy and his unpublished manuscript memoirs comprising some 179 handwritten pages, were given to a local museum.  Steve has transcribed the memoirs and they form the main source for his story of Bellamy, although as they end abruptly in 1873, he has also drawn on other contemporary sources for Bellamy’s later life.

Although they came originally from Westbury-on-Severn, John Bellamy’s family were living in Bidfield Farm at The Camp when he was born and the young Bellamy was baptised in Bisley.  His early life was unremarkable with jobs as a farmer’s boy and then as a servant. It was while working as a servant for a family in Fulham that he was first introduced to the art of making models of buildings, which would change the course of his life.  Returning to live with his grandmother in Gloucestershire in 1830 he set out with his brother to try to make money posing as travelling minstrels. By autumn it was too cold to continue travelling around and he started making models for the first time; initially from card, but eventually from cork and at first as commissions from wealthy patrons.

These models in their various forms were to provide his living for the rest of his long life. In 1831 he had the good fortune for his models to be seen by King William IV and subsequently made his models under royal patronage.  Finding it difficult to get a suitable display space, he resorted to having his own wagons built and travelled around the countryside living in one of the wagons and moving from fair to fair.  His Windsor Castle model covered over 90 square feet and had over 2000 hand made windows.  In 1857, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a private showing of his travelling exhibition and this cemented his connection with Royalty.

At the height of his fame, Bellamy’s “Royal Model Gallery” travelled in nine wagons, initially drawn by 16 horses but adapted for rail travel in the 1860s. Together they formed an exhibition space of some 70 by 40 feet and it must have been an impressive sight indeed when all set up.  Sadly most of his larger models do not survive today, as having been sold to a gallery in Liverpool in 1877 they are believed to have been destroyed in the Blitz during the Second World War. Some models remain in private owenrship with Bellamy’s descendants and the Pitville Pump Room model remains in the possession of the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, though sadly it is no longer on public display.

This is just a very brief summary of the fascinating life of John Bellamy which Steve recounted for us and there are many more details and some pictures of the models in an article writen by Steve for the journal “Gloucestershire History” in 2008, which has been published online by the Gloucestershire Local History Assiciation and can be found here

Wednesday 19 February  – Lilyhorn Roman Villa and Local Pre-history, Pete Moore

Another full house for us to learn about our unique local (but totally hidden) Roman Villa. Sited at the top of the hill above Bournes Green in ‘Church Piece’ field (wrongly indicated on O.S. maps incidentally), the site is protected by Historic England. Pete took us through the development of Roman villas in Britain, explaining that the Lilyhorn villa seems to have been the second largest in the Cotswolds (after Woodchester), and in the top 10 in GB, comprising over 25 rooms and numerous outbuildings.

Initially identified in 1700, the first (and only significant) excavation was conducted by Thomas Baker in 1841 and 1845. The site already largely decimated, over the years much of the stonework and mosaics have been scattered. Small finds include pottery fragments and metal fastenings (in Stroud Museum), a significant hoard of coins (what was not traded is in Corinium Museum), glass fragments, tiles, oyster shells, and.. skeletons (possibly of slaves).

Clearly a villa of some opulence there are questions as to why it was sited there. The situation overlooking the valley is certainly key, and its possible extensive sphere of influence over local farmland. It followed on from local prehistoric and Iron Age sites such as Money Tump and Bagendon. Pete’s comprehensive overview was fascinating, highlighting many of the answered and unanswered questions about the site.

Wednesday 15 January – Slide Show – Mike Mills and Beyond

A full house in the France Lynch Church Rooms to hear four members of the Committe present a selection of “slides” both from the Stan Gardiner / Lionel Padin / Mike Mills collection and from a series of more recent (1960s/70s/80s) negatives from the Stroud News and Journal (SNJ).

Peter Dover, started off the presentation with a selection entitled “Then and Now”.  Using a selection of old photos from the Mike Mills collection, Pete had tracked down the locations and taken a modern photo as close as possible to the viewpoint of the original.  The selection included street and canal towpath views, pubs, schools and a view of the Victoria Steam Joinery Works, where it proved challenging to get to the same viewpoint today.  The picture left shows Victoria Works, with the archive picture on the left and Pete’s modern version on the right. The wooden shed in the old picture is long gone, but the building shapes remain the same.

 

Roger Carnt then continued with a selection entitled “Old and Sporty”. This included several pictures from the SNJ archives of sports teams (some now in our new gallery see next section for details), a few of local “personalities” and some views in and around Chalford, including the one on the right which very clearly shows the area known as Randall’s Green.

 

 

 

 

Camilla Boon followed with a section entitled “Mainly People”.  Photos in this section were exclusively from the 1960s onwards and resulted in a great many comments as people in the audience recognised themselves or others.  As a result of this response and hoping to capture some of the information, we’ve put a few of these photos on a new gallery page here and also on our Group Facebook page here (Private group so you need to join to view and participate) and we’d like to encourage you to look and comment if you think you might recognise anyone. Any information we receive will be recorded in our database along with the photo, so your contributions will be saved for posterity!  The photo on the left shows the interior of the roof of the former Company’s Arms.

 

 

 

Heather Collins concluded the show with a section entited “Miscellaneous”. This had everything from 1970s school photos to older views in and around Chalford, and again one or two of these photos will be in our new gallery and on our Facebook Group page for people to comment on. The photo on the right is an aerial picture of France Lynch (note no Sports and Social Club!) and we’d love to be able to date it more accurately, so if anyone can see any feature missing from or present in the photo which gives more of a clue to the date please contact us here