The Life of Fred Archer 
CHAPTER I 
Back in the Georgian era, the rosy dawn of Cheltenham's 
prosperity, in the days when ladies rode about on pillions, 
William Archer had a livery stable in St. George's Place, 
Cheltenham. His house v/as, and is, something like a white- 
washed Noah's Ark, and still has an old-world expression of 
perfect tranquilHty. William Archer I. did a thriving business, 
principally in letting out " double horses," and his brother 
Frederick was a well-to-do man who kept the Foley Arms at 
Malvern. St. George's Place is a small thoroughfare lead- 
ing from the High Street opposite the Fleece Hotel into 
Bayshill Road. 
The quaint little home of at least three generations of the 
Archers is very difficult to photograph, as the street is narrow 
and the cottage very much built in. Thus a picture of it 
makes the house look like a funny little box, and proves that 
the camera can sometimes lie. Fred Archer's sister Alice 
looked at the hardly-won presentment of her grandfather's old 
home, and said scornfully : " Father was a well-to-do steeple- 
chase rider at the time, and you'd think to look at this that 
Fred had been born in the gutter." This unpretentious yet 
highly respectable cottage stands much as it stood in the times 
of the earlier Georges. The front of the house may have been 
a little altered, but the yard at the back retains some of the 
aspects of an old posting-place. 
Cheltenham has a small respect for real celebrities and their 
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