The Bristol Railway Archive

Watching a re-run of Michael Portillo's Railway Journeys", he stopped off in Cheltenham and stated "At one time Cheltenham had seven railway The one nearest the spa was name Montpellier.

Was there ever anything like a spa in the Montpellier district of Bristol?

For interest's sake I looked up an old map; but it only shows six Cheltenham stations;
Landsdown, Spa, Malvern Road, St James, High Street and Racecourse.

Just outside the town were Swindon and Churchdown.
http://www.systemed.net/carto/New_Adles ... _Atlas.pdf

Both Leckhampton (also sometimes known as Cheltenham South and Leckhampton) and Charlton Kings were both within or adjacent to the Victorian built up areas around Cheltenham.

I'm not sure that map is accurate showing a Cheltenham Spa station next to Lansdown. All three major stations in Cheltenham (Lansdown, Malvern Road and St James) all had "Cheltenham Spa" at the start of their names. To have had another station simply called "Cheltenham Spa" would have led to some considerable confusion.

This is also the first I've heard about a station at Swindon on the Midland main line. Can anybody shed any more light on it? Swindon was out in the country in those days so wouldn'tcount as a central Cheltenham station. There also were, and still are to some extent, some green fields between Cheltenham and Churchdown

So by my counting, the stations within the general boundaries of Cheltenham were (in order of proxmity to the centre of town):

1. St James
2. High Street
3. Malvern Road
4. Lansdown
5. Cheltenham South and Leckhampton
6. Charlton Kings
7. Racecourse

I happened to be looking at old OS maps of Cheltenham for another reason tonight, and I found a station north of Lansdown on the Midland main line. This was at the point where the Tewkesbury Road (now A4019) crosses the railway. The map dates from 1901.

This may be the Swindon station shown on the original plan discussed above. If I knew where my copy of "Passengers No More" is I would look it up!

I found my copy of Passengers No More but the station wasn't listed, so I turne to the internet. On the Wiki page dealing with the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway it has this to say:

Cheltenham; opened 24 June 1840; sometimes known as Cheltenham Spa Lansdown; still open;
Cheltenham High Street; opened 1 September 1862; closed 1 July 1910
Swindon (Gloucestershire); opened 26 May 1842; closed 1 October 1844;
Cleeve; opened 14 February 1843; closed 20 February 1950;
Ashchurch; opened 24 June 1840; closed 15 November 1971; reopened 2 June 1997; still open; divergence of Tewkesbury branch (1840 ÔÇô 1964); divergence of line to Evesham (1864 - 1963)

So now we appear to have two stations to the north of Cheltenham - High Street 1862-1910 and Swindon 1842-1844. The station shown on the 1901 map I mentioned was High Street because it is about half a mile from Cheltenham High Street itself. If you did happen to walk that way back in the early years of the 20th century you would have passed Cheltenham High Sreet Halt opened by the GWR in 1908 and closed in 1917. Cheltenham Racecourse station was open between 1912 and 1976 on race days only, and is of course now the southern terminus of the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.

So I'm going to take back what I said about there being 7 stations in Cheltenham - there could be 6, 7, 8 or 9 depending on how you want to calculate it and what period you happen to be looking at