LECTURES. 55 



Musical Promenade, which now is Montpellier Walk with its armless 

 ladies. Adjoining this Spa was a Museum much frequented by 

 visitors, where Beard's shop now stands. Beyond this was the rustic 

 farm (Gallipot Farm) which is now Suffolk House, taking its name 

 from Lord Suffolk, who bought the whole Suffolk Estate from Mont- 

 pellier to the Park for the sum which is now given for a single house 

 in Suffolk Square. In this century the Promenade was a marsh where 

 the visitor had to cross the Chelt by a plank, but if he wanted a 

 securer passage there was a drawbridge a little lower down the stream. 

 At the head of the Avenue used to stand Sherborne Spa, named 

 like the Promenade after the then Lord of the Manor. The site is 

 now occupied by the familiar facade of the Queen's Hotel, in front of 

 which are the cannons taken at Sebastopol ; the materials of which 

 the Spa was built were largely used to erect what are now called the 

 Imperial Rooms. When the society swell was not taking his waters 

 to cure his real or imaginary ailments at the Royal Spa, there were 

 other amusements for him : there was the Medical Promenade, where 

 a band played, " where every player was respectable and some emi- 

 nent " ; there was the famous Williams' Library, only dispersed the 

 other day, and the Club Room of VVeller's, a fashionable haunt, and at 

 a somewhat later date he could stroll into the Park, when it was a 

 Park, and look- at the flowers in the quaintly devised geographical 

 beds, or entertain himself at the Assembly Rooms, which then pre- 

 sented an appearance curiously like Newgate, and within whose walls 

 a stern discipline of etiquette was rigidly maintained. 



Such was Cheltenham in the days when it was a Health Resort, 

 when its population was going up at the rate of 2000 a year. 



Cheltenham has had a long list of worthies, too long to enumerate, 

 but I must mention a few. I have already spoken of Prynne. Besides 

 him there was Macready, the actor, who lived in Wellington Square, 

 Dr. Jenner who practised in this town and who first vaccinated in 

 Alpha House on Bayshill ; in the Cemetery rests T. Haynes Bayly 

 who wrote songs like " She wore a wreath of roses " and "Oh no, we 

 never mention her," which were household words with the last genera- 

 tion and the butt of this. Few perhaps of you, when you get out at 

 the G.W.R. realise that the house you first see was often occupied by 

 the poet Tennyson, whose mother lived there, and that he must have 

 spent many hours walking on the site of the Station when composing 

 In Memoriam. Then there were Close, Boyd, Robertson, all three 

 great divines, many of whose sermons must have been heard by past 

 Collegians in the days when there was no Chapel. 



