Improvements (1857)
This heading may be a misnomer as it’s not clear whether any improvements were carried out to the property at all although this was certainly the intention. Jones and his backers (the lessees who took it over along with the Rotunda and Montpellier Gardens in late 1856) declared, via the Cheltenham Looker-On of 6 December that year, that ‘The Montpellier Baths will undergo a thorough repair, and additional accommodation will be provided if required. In particular it may be stated that arrangements will be made for the frequent and perfect change of Water in the Swimming Bath. In short, however great the requirements of the subscribers may be, the lessess purpose to meet them in a liberal manner, ensuring necessary attendence, cleanliness and comfort in every department’.
However, it was made clear that ‘the extent of the alterations and renovation of the Baths and Gardens will depend in a measure upon the support which may be given to the lessees by the Cheltenham Public; it is therefore deemed desirable at once to form a scale of Annual Subscription for certain advantages…’ A single subscription cost £2 2s with a family subscription (up to four persons) £5 5s. Unfortunately there is no surviving record of the amount of subscriptions taken out and there is nothing in newspapers of the time confirming that any improvements were made; the fact that the new lessees in 1862 immediately redecorated the Baths suggests that if anything did happen, it was minimal.
Improvements (1862)
In March 1862, having acquired the lease of the property, the Montpellier Gardens Company announced that the Baths was being ‘thoroughly repaired and renovated’ and would reopen on 7 April. Visiting the premises for the reopening Cheltenham Examiner declared that ‘Great good taste has been exercised in the re-arrangement and re-decoration of the swimming bath, which now presents an appearance such as it has never before worn’ while the Cheltenham Chronicle stated that ‘These old-established baths, we are pleased to find, have just been re-opened by the Montpellier Gardens Company, completely renovated, and in fact they now appear to be in better order and in a more complete state than they have been for some years.’
There was almost no further comment in the local press or by the Company itself which gives rise to questions over just how significant a renovation actually took place. A floor plan prepared for the Globe Insurance Company and approved on 22 February 1862 exists but this appears to show the building as it was at the time and as the Montpellier Gardens Company only took possession of the premises that month they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do very much. How much structural work could they realistically have undertaken in a matter of a few weeks in time for opening in early April?
The Company itself had only been established the previous year and it’s clear that its shareholders did not have deep pockets despite having two baronets as directors. An announcement by the Company in the Cheltenham Annuaire of 1861 declared ‘The Montpellier Baths will undergo a thorough repair’ but went on to say that ‘the extent of the alterations and renovations of the Baths…will depend in a measure upon the support which may be given to the Lessees by the Cheltenham Public; it is therefore deemed desirable at once to form a scale of Annual Subscription for certain advantages…’ This is, incredibly, almost the same wording as that used by Jones and his fellow backers in 1856 and the price of subscription was identical!
Taken altogether, it seems likely that the renovations at this time were mostly of a decorative nature rather than including many structural changes and that there were still circa 12 wash baths.
Complaints (1864)
The Montpellier Gardens Company fell foul of the council’s Sewerage Committee in the summer of 1864 following complaints by the residents of Bath Road. The Company had previously laid pipes beneath the road at a depth of nine or ten feet for the purpose of obtaining a supply of water from the sand bed but unfortunately these pipes drained the wells of many of the Baths’ neighbours! As a result the Committee made an order that these pipes should be removed while giving permission to lay new pipes at a depth of three to four feet in front of Oriel Place where a line of piping already existed. This line of piping had apparently not been used since the construction of a new sewer in Bath Road – presumably the one much complained about by William Ruck nine years earlier.
At this time, acccording to the Company’s annual report, a single bath (whether warm or cold), douche or shower cost 1s 6d although you could pay for 20 baths up front for £1 1s.
Improvements (1869/70)
The Montpellier Gardens Company had been leasing the Montpellier Baths and Rotunda since 1861 at which time they had purchased the Montpellier Gardens for £5,750. £1,750 had been paid immediately but the remaining £4,000 was still outstanding, only 4% interest being paid in the interim.
After three years of negotiations, in March 1868 the Company entered into a new agreement with the Globe Insurance Company to add the Baths to the Gardens for a total sum of £8,000 (technically purchasing them for £2,250). They paid the Globe an immediate £300 which was added to the previous payment of £1,750 leaving an outstanding balance of £6,000 to be paid to the Globe within 10 years. Just seven months later advertisements were being placed by architect Edward Holmes, indicating that, unlike 1862, the Gardens Company shareholders had significant funds at their disposal. The Baths were to be ‘rebuilt’.
The property was closed for the whole of 1869 and the spring of 1870 to enable the remodelling of most of the internal aspects – the external walls and roof remained largely untouched. The Cheltenham Examiner of 18 May 1870 reported that the ‘Montpellier Baths have recently been re-opened, after a lengthened closing for repairs and alterations, and though there still remain many matters of detail to be completed, we are able to speak with considerab1e satisfaction of the changes which have been effected…’
After dealing with the changes made to the swimming bath they dealt in much greater depth with the rest of the changes: ‘it is in the portion of the building appropriated to the hot baths that the most extensive alterations have been made, the whole having been remodel1ed.
‘In the first place, there is the important improvement of separate entrances from the street for ladies and gentlemen, and a convenient little waiting room for the former. The ladies’ portion is kept severed from the gentlemen’s, and is somewhat more commodiously fitted up…’
‘There are in all twenty-seven separate bath rooms – four first-class and 23 second-class,— the former fitted up with baths of encaustic tiles, and the latter of Rufford’s patent, which gained the late Prince Consort’s gold medal for the best bath cast in one piece. Each bath is supplied through an ingenious apparatus, fitted up by Savory of Gloucester; every room is venti1ated by a horizontal shaft communicating with the boiler shaft; and the bell catch by which the bather summons the bath attendant is ingeniously contrived so as to throw out an indicator in the corridor at the same time that it sounds the gong in the attendant’s room.
‘The cold water for the baths is collected in a tank overhead, with a capacity of 25,000 gallons, but for the hot water, no reservoir is needed, Purnell’s system of circulation — by which the water is kept continually passing through the boiler and a network of pipes underneath the building, and is replenished, through a self-acting valve, from the cold cistern — having been adopted. With such celerity is the supply of hot water provided by this means, that the whole 27 baths can be heated to any temperature in 30 minutes’.
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