Bath Road │19   previous / next  |  main map  /  bath road map

166 Bath Road (formerly 1 Clare Cottages)

In 1883 Mr Charles Smith, an accountant and collector of debts resided here but left to live in Regent Street in 1885. By 1889 this was the home of a Post Office clerk called William Woodward, who lived here with his wife and five children. The house still had a front garden at the time and the children played in the street but this situation was somewhat spoiled in 1892, when the owner of the adjacent property built a shop on the front of his premises. A similar fate had befallen 1 Clare Cottages within a few years.

​Around the turn of the 20th century this became one of three adjoining properties owned by the Dix family. This one was an ironmongers and had a brass strip announcing that fact along the pavement. In 1911 Samuel Dix informed readers in a local newspaper that his was the ‘cheapest and best house for kitchen utensils’.

Image courtesy of The Wilson

On 22nd January 1918 these premises were taken over by the National Restaurant, otherwise known as a Communal Kitchen. This was part of a national movement during the Great war, in a time of food shortages, whereby local authorities set up kitchens to cook nutritious food at affordable prices. Customers would take their own dishes to the shop and take the food home to eat. Cheltenham had three such Communal Kitchens, the first being at Trinity mission hall in Winchcombe Street.

The National Restaurant closed late in 1920 and was immediately followed by the next tenant, electrician Arthur Chapman, his wife Mary and their five children. Two more sons were born here during their 4 year stay. The shop was double-fronted and in one window Arthur had a black china cat and in the other a black china dog. He replaced the eyes on both creatures with flashing lights. On one occasion an elderly gentleman passing by was quite cross with him saying it was an outrageous waste of electricity!​

Arthur, a motor mechanic during the First World War, loved to tinker with anything mechanical and made himself a radio receiving station in a room above the shop, where he was able to receive British broadcasts. For this he had to purchase a licence for ten shillings from the Postmaster General.

Arthur & Mary Chapman

Great care had to be taken when listening to the radio, however, as when a tram rumbled along the Bath Road huge sparks would fly out of the set!

Mary was born in Cheltenham to Italian parents, who arrived here in the late 19th century. Her brother, Louis Cascarini, lost his life in the First World War and is commemorated on the memorial in the Promenade. When Arthur and Mary’s family grew to seven children they moved to Karoo Cottage in Leckhampton.

photo courtesy of Nik Thomas

On 21st January 1924 these premises were taken over by the High Class Supper Bar and Fish and Chip Restaurant, which advertised “delicious hot cutlets of fish and chips every evening at 7 o’clock”. The first fish fryer was Mr Thomas Arthur Nicholson, who was here until the mid 1930s. He used a coal fryer to cook the fish and chips and local people could tell how cooked or burnt the food was by how thick and black the smoke was!

One penny worth of chips, or tuppence for fish, was wrapped in newspaper and at the end of the day the scratchings could be had for next to nothing.

When Mr and Mrs Albert Hill took over the fish shop little did they know how popular it would be in the middle of the night. During World War II the Bath Road Traders had their own night-watch wardens who would take it in turns to patrol the area looking out for incendiary bombs. Each evening those on duty would meet at one of the shops and use it for a base. During the winter months the Hill’s shop was by far the warmest of the bases. Mr and Mrs Hill moved in the late 1940s to Edward Terrace, where they opened the Norwood Fish Bar.

WWII Poster
1950

The Bath Road shop was then bought by Arthur Camsey and his wife Lydia, who had other shops in Cheltenham, including one in Cambray. The Camsey family were prominent in the Salvation Army, where their son Terry was a musician who played the cornet.

In 1948 Mr Albert Richards bought this shop from Mr Camsey and throughout the 1950s and 60s it was called the Bath Road Fish Restaurant. He then sold it to the Ashton family in 1965.

The shop was renamed “Big Fish” by Mr Derek McCardie, who owned the business from the late 1960s until about 1977. It was he who designed the fish logo on the sign that for many years projected from the front of the building (it was still evident when the shop was named The Rainbow). In 1990 Mr and Mrs Williams took over the shop and won many awards for the quality of their fish and chips, including one issued by the Government to very few establishments.

From the 1970s to the 1990s this fish and chip shop was known as The Big Fish. It then became The Rainbow for several years, until in the summer of 2014 it underwent a major refurbishment and resumed the name Big Fish. Remarkably we have a continuity of trade here, lasting more than 100 years.

For some local memories of this shop please click here.

Big Fish

Assistants of the Bath Road Fish & Chip Restaurant
The Rainbow in 2013
The Big Fish 2015

Researchers: Marilyn West & Stuart Manton (September 2018)

If you have any further information or photographs of this property please let us know via the contacts page.