Pump Room is a wonderful backdrop for cafe and music
» AS lockdown restrictions ease and people take pleasure in being able to socialise again, albeit at safe distances, the new Heritage café bar at Pittville Pump Room has become a popular place to enjoy meeting friends and family in a beautiful outdoor location.
Seeing the café’s tables and chairs packed with visitors on a daily basis, it’s hard to believe this is the first time since the beginning of the Second World War that people have been able to enjoy a cup of tea and a cake outside the Pump Room.
Historic buildings have colourful stories to tell and Pittville Pump Room is no different. Built between 1825 and 1830 by architect John Forbes, it was planned as the centrepiece of Joseph Pitt’s vision of a “new town” development of Pittville, at a time when the town was becoming popular due to Cheltenham’s mineral spa waters.
Pitt planned a 100-acre estate, with miles of walkways and rides, as well as a magnificent pump room and a church to serve a new community on 100 acres of farmland.
His Pittville would be a town in its own right and rival neighbouring Cheltenham.
Pittville Pump Room, with its majestic dome and styles combining Greek and Roman architecture, was the last and largest one of its kind to be built in the country, complete with a colonnade of Ionic columns and statues of the Hygieia, the goddess of health and hygiene, Asclepius, the god of medicine, and Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine.
The pump room’s impressive scale, combined with the extensive park and lake, reflect Cheltenham’s prosperity during the first half of the 1820s.
The design included a grand central hall with chandeliers, elaborate ornate plasterwork, an upstairs gallery leading to a library, reading room and games room.
It cost £40,000 to build, the equivalent of £3.9 million at today’s prices. It was plagued with difficulties, mainly financial, from early on.
Pitt was hit by a national banking crisis and spiralled into debt. He was forced to sell the pump room for just £5,400 to satisfy his creditors. Work constantly stalled and elements were abandoned due to lack of money.
The building opened on July 30, 1830, and at first it was a great success, with bands performing several times a week, balls and fetes, and other society events.
Crowds of fashionable visitors visited the park to parade along the walkways and rides.
The pump room was requisitioned during the Second World War for military use.
American servicemen were housed on the upper floor while the ground floor became a food store.
Parts of the colonnade were bricked up. Restoration work to repair wartime damage began in 1949 and the building reopened in 1960.
With the opening of The Cheltenham Trust’s outdoor Heritage café bar, the pump room has gone full circle, once again welcoming café visitors and hosting the lively Music in the Park events.
And how wonderful that the statues continue to watch over what has become a truly happy place contributing to everyone’s mental wellbeing and at this time what could be more important?
Have you visited yet? Find out more about the heritage café and the Music in the Park programme of events at www.cheltenhamtrust.org.uk