Improvements (1862)
The Montpellier Gardens Company made changes to the wash baths when it took over the tenancy of the premises at the beginning of 1862 but it appears that they may have made alternations to the swimming bath at this time. We know that in 1847 the swimming bath was described as being 75 ft x 25 ft with a shallow end of 4 ft and a deep end of 6 ft, but in the annual report of the Company for the financial year 1863/64 the bath’s dimensions were given as 65 ft x 23 ft and the shallow end as 3 ft.
During this swimming season, which ran 1 April – 31 October, a single admission to the swimming bath was 6d or 7d to include the use of a towel. A season ticket (referred to as an annual subscription) cost £1 1s. The prices were the same for men and women, despite the fact that the ladies had to make do with their own much smaller swimming bath.
It is unlikely that changes were made in the 1850s so soon after its construction, nor due to Pearson Thompson’s money troubles or the flood of 1855, so we can only assume the dimensions were altered at this time. The report also states that there had been plans to enlarge the bath but this had been abandoned in favour of constructing a second large swimming bath in the area then being used for the mill and bakery. While this didn’t happen at this time, the idea raised its head again six years later.
Improvements (1869/70)
The main swimming bath underwent few, if any, significant changes after it was completed in 1847 until 1869 when the vast majority of the inside of the Baths was completely re-modelled. The Cheltenham Examiner of 18 May 1870 remarked on the improvements shortly after the reopening:
‘The alterations which have been made in the large swimming bath have been directed rather to the increased accommodation of bathers before and after bathing than to any enlargement to the bath itself; the space around the bath has been increased, and a large number of additional dressing boxes has been provided. The proposal to enlarge the bath was abandoned in favour of the design to make a second bath, of nearly equal dimensions, and with a separate entrance, and this, we understand, though not yet commenced, is 1ikely to be so shortly’. To increase the space, changes had to be made to the boiler house, entrance and wash baths (which were completely overhauled), while the cold plunge was removed. The Examiner also reported that the small swimming bath that had previously been reserved for ladies ‘has been considerably enlarged and improved’.
There is no surviving floor plan from 1870 but as there are no records of any further changes made to the property under the ownership of the Montpellier Gardens Company we assume the 1898 floor plan – which matches almost every description of the building from the time – shows the layout as of 1869/70 improvements.
Having said that, it is possible that some change was made to the ladies swimming bath a few years later. An advertisement of July 1879 survives using the words ‘now open’ gives the impression that it had been closed for a while – was this for a minor facelift rather than for a significant alteration (it doesn’t appear to have been mentioned elsewhere) or had the bath merely been closed for a while due to a lack of popularity and the Baths now wanted to promote ladies swimming?
Whatever had been expressed to the press about a second swimming bath turned out to be mere puffery. Once again, it never materialised.
Aquatic entertainments
John Maxfield was appointed manager in April 1881 after the death of his predecessor, Josiah Jessop. He lost no time in making his presence felt by deciding to stage an aquatic exhibition and ensured maximum publicity by getting a celebrity not simply to open the proceedings but to actually take part – and for both a matinee and evening performance – as heralded in this advertisement in the Cheltenham Looker-On:
Matthew Webb was born in Shropshire in 1848 and learned to swim in the river Severn as a young boy. At the age of 12 he spent two years on the training ship HMS Conway, during which time he saved one of his crewmates who had fallen overboard. This was not to be the first time Webb became a hero as in 1863 – now an apprentice in the merchant navy – he saved one of his younger brothers from drowning in the Severn while on leave, and in 1873 was awarded the first Stanhope Medal for diving into the Atlantic in an (unsuccessful) effort to rescue another sailor who went overboard. That same year he read of a failed attempt to swim the English Channel, a feat generally held to be impossible, and decided that if anyone was going to achieve it, he was.
He quit his job as a ship’s captain and started training at the Lambeth Baths in London before moving into the Thames and, eventually, the Channel itself. He made his first attempt on 12 August 1875 but had to abandon the swim after a few hours due to an unexpected storm making conditions dangerous. He made his second attempt on 24 August, beginning by diving from the end of Dover Pier. To swim the Channel in a straight line would have meant covering a distance of a little over 21 miles. Due to currents Webb’s route was anything but straight, and by the time he emerged from the water he had covered almost 40 miles. He’d also been stung by jellyfish.
Webb found himself famous and had no need to return to working on ships, touring the country for the next few years performing in exhibitions and executing aquatic stunts. He was still a big draw when he visited Cheltenham in 1881 and the Looker-On of 23 July reported that his performances at the Baths ‘were numerously attended on both occasions, a number of the fair sex, seated around the large swimming bath in which they took place, being among the audience… Capt Webb gave a short sketch of his early predilections for the water, followed by an ampler account of the Channel feat which has made his name… Having completed his narrative he, with two others, committed himself to the bath, the trio swimming to and fro a sufficient number of times to complete a given distance, the hero of the scene of course accomplishing this first’.
One wonders how Captain Webb would have felt had he read this account as the Looker-On felt the greatest attraction was not Webb, but John Maxfield: ‘…the most sensational feats of the entertainment were those provided by Mr Maxwell, the Manager of the Baths, who not only proved himself an expert swimmer but an accomplished athlete as well, flinging himself into the water from a swing in rapid motion and at a considerable height’. This was in addition to his diving from the roof of the Baths into just five feet of water.
The success of this event meant that Maxfield continued to hold an aquatic entertainment on an annual basis. According to the Gloucester Citizen ‘a large and influential gathering took place’ on 27 September 1883, noting that ‘some of the races were well contested, and elicited loud applause. The tub races created great amusement as did also the pole walking, an almost impossible feat on a pole suspended above the water’. There were at least two exhibitions in 1885, although the one in July appears to have been organised by a recently-established swimming club and included a water polo match between Cheltenham and Edgbaston, the latter winning. This may have been the first time water polo had been played at the baths as it isn’t mentioned in any previous press reports.
It must have proved popular as at Maxfield’s own event in September it was again on the agenda as reported by The Looker-On (still getting the manager’s name wrong): ‘Aquatic Sports, in a town where the Pittville Lake is the only piece of water its visitors ever see sounds very much like a joke; and yet for the last two or three years these have been included in the programme of its amusements. Mr Maxwell, the manager of the Montpellier Baths, having cleverly contrived to render his large Swimming Bath available for this purpose, on Wednesday last, in presence of a crowded audience, seated in Galleries ingeniously extemporised over the dressing boxes [to prevent ladies dresses being splashed by water], held quite an exhibition of Aquatic Feats, Swimming, Diving, and a variety of kindred performances affording them amusement; and, not unfrequently, evoking their admiration. Notably so were a Clothes Race, in which the competitors swam fully dressed, each carrying an umbrella, for which three prizes were offered and into which nine competitors entered; and an Aquatic Polo Match in which seventeen were engaged. But the most surprising of the evening’s performances was Mr. Maxwell’s own “dive” from the roof of the Bath into the water below’.
Maxfield never engaged a celebrity guest after that first exhibition, perhaps because his own feats were sufficient attraction in themselves. But what of Matthew Webb? Sadly, just two years after his visit to Cheltenham, Webb decided to undertake an exhibition swim through the rapids beneath the Niagara Falls. Many thought it was suicidal and so it proved: 10 minutes after leaping from a boat to commence his swim he was pulled under the water; his body was recovered four days later. He was just 35.
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