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133 Bath Road (formerly 2 Northwick Place)

This property, and several others around the corner in Victoria Place, was owned by William Gyde in the middle of the 19th century. Mr Gyde ran a successful grocer’s shop in the High Street and, in time, acquired many properties in Cheltenham. Tenants seem to have spent relatively few years here and the trade changed quite frequently.

In February 1860 these premises briefly became the Bath Road Grocery Establishment of Mrs A. Boulter, who had taken over the old established business of Mr W.H. Piper. By June of that year, however, the shop and all of the stock were offered for sale at auction, so something had gone wrong. The following year the tenant was Mr Asmond Maillard, a widowed furniture dealer.

​After Mr Gyde, the property owner, died in 1868 the premises were put up for sale again and another furniture dealer, Samuel Stephens, had apparently been the tenant for some years. By the time of the 1871 census William Prust (or Pound?), a carpenter, occupied the building and it is not clear that there was still a shop.

In 1881 a new trade had arrived in the form of tailoring, with William Crisp and his son, also William, working here but just two years later the business was owned by Mr W.Guppy, who also had a shop in the High Street. He advertised himself as a “cash clothier, tailor, hatter, hosier and mourning warehouseman”.

From the early 1890s the shop appears to have been a newsagent’s and a distributor for The Gloucestershire Echo. At the start of the 20th century Mr Henry A. Wilding, who was described in some directories as a “shopkeeper”, owned this shop. Maybe it was because his small, dark shop carried such a mixture of goods from sweets and tobacco to coal and paraffin that it was difficult to describe him more accurately! A dark, spooky place, it kept the Wildings until the late twenties.

Mr Thomas Edward Sims took over the shop with his wife, Florence, in 1926 and ran it as a dairy. Thomas was the second son of Mr and Mrs William Frederick Sims, who had kept the Moorend Dairy at the top of the road near to the Norwood Arms. Thomas died at the early age of forty-five on January 23rd 1933.

1950

The occupant for the next thirty-five years or so was Mr Herbert Francis Atkins. Mr Atkins was a large fresh-faced man who wore brown leather gaiters. Mrs Atkins assisted her husband with the running of the shop, coming in from the living area when the bell announced a customer. She would look after the shop whilst her husband was out delivering the milk on his tricycle! He used to take a churn of milk out and fill the jugs that were brought out to him by his customers.

Milk was of course only one of many things delivered to homes in those days but Bath Road Dairy, as it was then known, was one of very few places that milk was on sale.

The dairy continued until late 1972 when it was bought by Mr E A M Galpin and opened as Bath Road Health Foods in January 1973. Mr Galpin and his wife had previously owned a grocery shop in Charlton Kings. When they took over this shop it was in need of some repairs. Indeed its roof, which had been blown off during the second world war, was still a temporary one!

For the first few years this was very much a family concern. Both Mr and Mrs Galpin worked in the shop and even Mr Galpin’s very fit octogenarian father helped out by weighing and packing the herbs and spices. As the business grew it was able to take on some part-time staff and about 1979 the shop was extended to take in what had previously been the garden area. Around the same time the shop changed its name to Bath Road Wholefoods.

1991

In 1977 Mr and Mrs Galpin’s daughter-in-law Helen joined the shop. David and Helen had married the year before and David was following his career in surveying. However, in 1985 he joined Helen at the shop and in March of that year they took over the business. After Mr and Mrs Galpin senior retired, Mr Galpin often helped out in their Winchcombe Street shop, which they had bought in 1990. The Bath Road shop had a re-fit in February 1988 and about the same time the name was changed for the third time.

It became Cheltenham Nutrition Centre, reflecting the trend for good healthy living that is fast becoming an essential way of life. Advice on diets and supplements and a range of organic foods are available at both Cheltenham shops and the Galpin’s shop in Tewkesbury, which they took over in November 1997.

Cheltenham Nutrition Centre

Researchers: Marilyn West and Stuart Manton (Nov 2022)

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