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109 Bath Road (formerly Thirlestaine Villa and Northwick Villa)

By 1848 this site was occupied by two large semi-detached houses known as Thirlestaine Villa and Northwick Villa.

​In 1849 Northwick Villa was the home of M. & Mme. Felix Murgeaud. He was a teacher of French at nearby Cheltenham College and was often reported in the newspapers as having departed for, or arrived from Paris. The splendidly-named Mr Charles Dallenger Chenery Esq., M.A. and his family occupied the house by 1854. Mr Chenery was the Writing Master at the College but in 1868 became a self-employed tutor at this address.

By 1876 Northwick Villa had become the residence of the Reverend J.A. Aston, the curate of St Luke’s church and in the late 19th century became a Cheltenham College boarding house. During the Great War in 1917, and no longer a College boarding house, it was taken over as a substitute school for the girls from Naunton Park school, which had become a hospital for wounded soldiers. Sometime after the war, and into the 1930s, Northwick Villa became the nurses’ hostel for the Imperial Nursing Home.

Thirlestaine Villa was also a boarding house for Cheltenham College from at least 1854 and was the home of many house masters and their families until about the mid 1930s.

These two residences were part of the larger Thirlestaine House estate, purchased by Lord Northwick in about 1840. Following his death they were included in the letting arrangements for the estate in 1861 and were each then rented for £105 per year.

The next owner of the estate was Sir Thomas Phillipps and through his daughter Katherine it passed to the Fenwick family. In 1939 Mr A.G. Fenwick put the villas up for auction and they were both described as having 4 reception rooms, 9 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and the usual “domestic offices” (kitchen, scullery etc.).

Thirlestaine Villa then became a furniture warehouse used by Barnby, Bendall & Co. Ltd. and in 1940 it suffered a serious fire and was badly damaged. No-one lived at the premises at that time. ​

The two villas no longer appear in trade directories of the 1950s or 1960s and by 1971 both Thirlestaine Villa and Northwick Villa had been demolished and the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society had built a computer centre here. In the 1980s the Midland Bank occupied the modern office block we see today.

HSBC

Researcher: Stuart Manton (August 2018)

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