Deservedly celebrated for its mineral waters, is a handsome well-built town, consisting chiefly of one street (a mile long), pleasantly situated in a fine fertile vale, near the foot of the Cotswold hills. The town has been very much improved within these few years, and is well paved and lighted; but the great beauty of the place is exhibited in the gardens behind each house, which abound with fruit and walnut-trees; and, as those gardens are for the most part of great length, they are formed into an infinite variety of pleasant walks. The lodgings are neat and commodious, many of them truly elegant, particularly Mrs. Mason’s, Mr. Hooper’s, Mr. Watson’s, Mr. Harward’s, Mr. Jones’s, Mr. Rooke’s, &c.
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The church is a very venerable Gothic structure, in the form of a cross, with aisles on each side, and a spire rising in the middle, noted for a good ring of bells. The great and small tithes of the parish are the property of the Earl of Essex. The officiating minister is a curate chosen by the inhabitants and approved by the Earl of Gainsborough, or the representative of Sir Baptist Hickes: they choose him for 6 years, and then either re-elect him, or appoint another curate. The curate must be a Welchman by birth, a bachelor, and brought up at Jesus-college, Oxford.
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The grammar-school is in high reputation. The assembly-rooms are elegantly disposed; and the theatre-royal, lately erected, is a neat and well-constructed building.
The walks and rides in the neighbourhood are equal to any in the kingdom, for variety, beauty, and richness of prospect.
Cheltenham has a good and plentiful market on Thursdays, and three annual fairs, viz. on the second Thursday in April, Holy Thursday, and 5th day of August.
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Nothing can be more convenient that the watering-place is to the town; the nobility and Gentry pass through the church-yard, under a fine alcove of lime trees, into a serpentine walk with orchards on each side; this leads to a beautiful meadow at the bottom, cross a rivulet, and then enter into the grand walk, which by a gentle acclivity leads to the buildings. This walk has a very striking effect; it is twenty feet wide, and the elm trees on each side are at least sixty feet high. The pump appears under a dome, through an airy and neat archway with two posterns; it is supported by pillars. On the right is the library and offices; on the left the breakfasting room. The latter is occasionally converted into a ball-room; it is forty by twenty, with a very neat orchestra, where the band plays in wet weather. Round the buildings is a shrubbery, upon a gentle ascent, and a walk round it with seats. From the upper part of the shrubbery there is a very magnificent view. The grand walk below forms a vista, through which the steeple of the church appears in all the sublimity of Gothic grandeur. This steeple runs flush from the tower to the height altogether of 200 feet, and is built of the same materials that form the church, a sort of moor-stone, which it is very difficult at this period to conjecture from whence it was collected, as there is not a present a quarry within twenty miles of the town that produces stone of that quality. The foot pavement of the town is the neatest and most convenient perhaps in England; it is upon the same plan as the foot pavement in London, but composed of much better materials, and much neater workmanship.
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Cheltenham is distant from London 94 miles, Gloucester 10, Tewkesbury 10, and Northleach 11. this place was honoured with the residence of the royal family during the autumn of the year 1788.
About two miles East of the town is a mineral spring, as a cot-house called Hyde. The waters are full as powerful as the spring at Cheltenham. Two miles farther to the East, Cleve Hill raises its awful head, clothed almost to the summit with hedge rows of elm-trees, which inclose corn-fields, arable lands, and orchards. At the top of this hill there are still left the remains of a Roman camp.
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