Transcriptions

CLHS is pleased to make available a number of resources arising from members’ research or transcription projects.

Please refer to our Copyright section before reproducing any of the material on this website.

Additional resources can be found on our Oral History Recordings and Alfred Miles Scrapbook pages.

Cheltenham Borough Council

Planning Applications from 1895 to 1947 have been digitised by a CLHS volunteer and are available here to download.

Cheltenham Building Survey Certificates

A number of Cheltenham building survey certificates, 1824-1840 and September 1848, are held at Gloucestershire Archives (GA Ref. B645/53281GS).

Background notes (including copyright) and a summary made by CLHS members are available for download with copyright restrictions here.

In the early 1990s CLHS members worked on a project to index the Cheltenham Examiner newspaper. The first edition of The Examiner was dated 17th June 1839 and the paper continued to be published weekly until 1913.

The index can be searched here.

Enfranchisement books of the Manor Court of Cheltenham

These record the transactions that turned the copyhold land held ‘in the hands of the Lord of the Manor’ into freehold tenure.
They contain approximately 2,800 transactions covering many premises and parcels of land, and include the name of the property owner (enfranchiser), the sum of money paid,  date, details of the property enfranchised, and occasionally, additional pencilled information.
CLHS member Sally Self has summarised the key information from the books into an Excel spreadsheet to make this resource available to all.

Available for Download (with copyright restrictions)

Explanatory notes

Sample images from the books

Search the database

Enfranchisement books of the Manor Court of Cheltenham (GA D2025/Box 35472)
Image: © Gloucestershire Archives D2025/Box 35472 page 228c image DCSF0032 (part)

Know Your Place mapping website

Know Your Place (KYP) is a website displaying a range of historic maps of Gloucestershire, including tithe maps from the 1840s, the 1855 Cheltenham Old Town Survey, Ordnance Survey maps from 1844-1865, and town plans from 1879-1888, with modern street maps for comparison purposes.

CLHS volunteers have uploaded short biographical notes and images which are attached to maps of the Cheltenham area for two areas of interest from the first decades of the 20th century: World War I servicemen and women, and the Supporters of Women’s Suffrage.

World War I servicemen and women

The KYP World War I layer holds around 1600 entries relating to men and women serving during the war from the Cheltenham area, linked to their home addresses, mostly accompanied by images. This collection was created by local historian David Drinkwater.

Know Your Place mapping: World War I
Click the image for guidance notes on accessing the WWI layer.

Women’s Suffrage Supporters

The KYP Women’s Suffrage layer has been created from a database of suffrage supporters in Gloucestershire researched and compiled by historian Sue Jones. A unique source of information and images for the Cheltenham area is a 1912 book of signatures of women and men presented in gratitude to their M.P. James Agg-Gardner for introducing the second reading of a women’s suffrage bill that year (Gloucestershire Archives reference D5130/6/6).

Know Your Place mapping: Suffrage Supporters
Click the image for guidance notes on accessing the Suffrage layer.

Old Town Survey 1855-7

In 2011 CLHS produced a reproduction of a large-scale map, originally commissioned by Cheltenham’s Borough Engineering Department— this is in 84 sections with a full index of all public and private premises, roads and other fascinating structures. The maps are available on CD from the CLHS Library, online at Know Your Place, or at Gloucestershire Archives and Cheltenham Local Studies Library.

Available for download

Introduction

Contents

Index

Old Town Survey 1855-7
Old Town Survey 1855-7

Pittville Spa Subscription book 1830-1852

A comprehensive record of the mid-19th century visitors to the Pittville Spa Pump Room. The original volume, held at Gloucestershire Archives, records their names, addresses and the Pittville amenities that they enjoyed during their stay in the town, and were transcribed by Kath Boothman and Jill Waller in 2014.

Available for download:

Background

Terms of subscription (images from the subscription book)

Transcription

PIttville Pump Room 1826
Pittville Pump Room, drawn by its architect John Forbes. The central pediment was never executed (from Griffith’s New Historical Description of Cheltenham, 1826)

St Mary’s parish registers

Transcriptions of the parish registers for St Mary’s, Cheltenham, (now The Minster) are available for download. Access to the registers is also available at Gloucestershire Archives and online at Ancestry (free access at GA).