Tivoli Place – Cheltenham Southtown

Tivoli Place – Beyond Tivoli Street

At the corner of Andover Road and Tivoli Street is the start of the long terrace of commercial properties that most people identify with Tivoli Place. However, this terrace has not always been a neat row of attached properties and its present appearance dates from as recently as 1991. At that time the balconies were added and a break in the row where the builder’s yard of S.C. Morris had been sited was infilled to form more shops.

The earliest date of the properties occurs in a Cheltenham street directory of 1837. This suggests that there was a mixture of retail, office and domestic properties, all with first floor accommodation. The address of the whole terrace by 1837 was Tivoli Place and in that year, an advert in the local Directory introduces us to one of the first families, the Dovers:

‘Thomas Dover, Builder of Tivoli Place, Cheltenham: Buildings executed and repaired on the shortest notice, in the various branches of masonry, bricklaying, carpentry and joinery, plumbing, painting, glazing etc.’

A second advert appeared in the same edition of the Directory:

‘Thomas Dover, Coals. Families supplied with the best Staffordshire Broach, Welsh, Newport and Forest, on reasonable terms.’

The exact location of Dover’s business premises is not clear but a directory of 1840 lists Dover’s office immediately before the Tivoli Inn, which was on the site now partly taken by Catherine Colebrook and Tivoli Trading. The actual coal yard was further along the road, on the corner site of Lypiatt Street, now occupied by Lypiatt Row and stretching back as far as Groves Batteries. This however does present a problem unless of course, the coal yard was shared by more than one company, for in 1845 the local directory carried the following advert:

‘Barrett, M; Coal Merchant, 19 Tivoli Place.
Mark Barrett, Coal merchant, very superior coal from the Parkend Collieries, Lydney, Forest of Dean. Orders received at Mr Blake’s.’

Thomas Dover’s business may well have started some time before the first buildings were constructed in Tivoli Place and there is some evidence to show that he was responsible for the building of one of the house terraces in the late 1820s.

Thomas died in 1841, having been born out of the county in 1786. He was succeeded by his son George, who advertised that he had taken over his father’s business. By the time of the 1851 census he lived with his family at 19 Tivoli Place, now number 60a, where he was described as a builder and coal agent employing 45 men. By 1851 George’s widowed mother was living next door at number 20. She hailed from Holesworth in Suffolk, where she was born in 1780. Living with her was her daughter Esther Cook, with her husband and her four children.

As number 19 is referred to in both the Dover and Barrett adverts, presumably this referred to the house, and also to the coal yard which, as suggested above, may have been a shared site.

When and why the family left Cheltenham is unclear but in 1861 George Dover and his family were living in Shrewsbury, where George was a surveyor and builder; his son George was a farmer and his son John, now aged 16 was still at school.

The Dovers’ coal business was bought and continued by William John Webb, who had started in business as a coal merchant on the Tewkesbury Road. In November 1886 there was a serious fire in the hayloft above the stables at the back of Webb’s yard. Ten horses had to be rescued but the many hundreds of tons of coal was far enough away not to be at risk. One of William’s sons became first Peoples’ Churchwarden of St Stephen’s Church, Tivoli in 1887, a position he held for five years.

Another firm with a long association with Tivoli Place’s trading history – and that of Cheltenham in general – was Cormell and Sons. The Cheltenham Examiner in 1859 reported that Thomas Cormell ‘of the firm of eminent builders, of Tivoli’ died tragically whilst he was assisting with loading some bulks of timber at the Midland Railway Station. The iron hooks gave way and a heavy piece of timber fell on him, causing a fatal fracture of the spine. Medical assistance was immediately procured but he lingered until 9 o’clock, when ‘death put an end to his suffering’. The newspaper reported that Mr Cormell had only been married about four months and ‘leaves a young widow to deplore his loss.’

No further reference to the death is known but presumably this Thomas was a son of the founder. If he was the same person listed in the 1851 census as living at 94 Winchcombe Street he would have been 23 years old at the time of his death.

The Cormell family had settled in Cheltenham at the latest by 1833 and their Tivoli Place premises ‘Lansdown Works, 8a Tivoli Place’ is now occupied by numbers 48-54.

Mr S.C. Morris, c. 1937

A third long-established building company which came to Tivoli Place was that of S C Morris & Son. It was founded by Mr S C Morris at Swindon Road in 1898. Their office and yard in Tivoli Place was purchased in 1916 from the firm of J.Cormell and Sons. The firm carried out many important building contracts in Cheltenham, including the construction of houses in Greenhills Road, Charlton Park Gate and Leckhampton Road. In 1937 they were engaged to build the new Emmanuel church in Naunton Park. Morris had a large wood yard on the opposite side of Andover Road, now occupied by houses.

Looking at the 1905 views of Tivoli Place, one can easily make out the break in continuity in the row of shops, showing the builders’ yard of Dover, Cormell and S C Morris. The infilling did not take place until 1991, marked by a Civic Society Plaque on the wall between Tivoli Trading and the Dry Cleaning shop.

Tivoli Place, c. 1904

It was at this time that the whole terrace was infilled and upgraded. Balconies were placed above each premises and the shop fronts altered to their present uniform pattern.

Tivoli Place in 2018

Detail from the Old Town Survey 1855-57

Research: Brian Torode
Additional Material: Stuart Manton (Feb 2018)

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