The Bell Inn has an attractive green tiled frontage with the words ‘Bell Inn’ in decorative tiles beneath the two front windows.
Gloucestershire Chronicle, 17th August 1850 – Richard Bolton, an old man, 78 years of age, was convicted of stealing an earthenware pint cup, the property of Mr Valentine Cooper, at the ‘Bell’ beerhouse in Bath Road, Cheltenham, on 24th July.
The prisoner was seen to steal the cup, and it was found in his hat by a policeman. He was sentenced a month’s imprisonment.
The above research courtesy Dr Martyn Beaufort
Cheltenham Examiner, Wednesday 19th February 1862 – Flyman’s Dinner: T.Vizard, Bell Inn, Bath Road, Cheltenham, begs respectfully to inform Fly Proprietors and Drivers that his Annual Dinner takes place on Wednesday 5th March, when he hopes the brethren of the whip, and their friends in this town, will favour him with their attendance. Dinner on the table at six o’clock.
Cheltenham Mercury, Saturday 24th May 1862 – Thomas Vizard, Bell Inn, Bath Road, Cheltenham: At this old-established house the WINES and SPIRITS will be found to be of the most genuine description. HOME BREWED ALES of first-rate quality.
Cheltenham Examiner, 24th November 1875: To be sold by auction by Mr. F.W. Lawrence on the premises on Thursday the 2nd day of December 1875, commencing at six for seven o’clock in the evening, all that most desirable noble-fronted Freehold, Fully-licensed Free Hotel. known as THE BELL INN, BATH ROAD, CHELTENHAM.
The house, on the ground floor, is repletely fitted with elegant bar, at the back of which is a snug bar parlour, with convenient side entrance, and adjacent thereto a capitally furnished smoke room. Adjoining the same room are front and back kitchens, together with hostelry, closets, basements etc. On the first floor, over the bar, is the well proportioned Billiard Room, and on the same floor are two bedrooms and a sitting room. On the second floor or top storey are four bedrooms, these rooms are approached by easy front and back staircases.
At the back and over the wing of the premises there is an extensive and exceedingly well-arranged BREWERY, with a capital brewing plant, the Copper of which contains about 400 gallons. Adjoining the brewhouse is a spacious club room, together with a side store room, all most convenient. The bsement in front and ground floor back are capitally planned in three roomy beer and spirit cellars, unexceptional for dryness and arrangement. The yard at the back of the premises is entered by large folding doors, and contains stabling, lofts, bakehouse, store room, hostelry, ostler’s room etc.
Cheltenham Original Brewery were the owners of the Bell Inn in 1891 and 1903. It was licensed as an ale house and had an annual rateable value of £25.10s.0d. increasing by four pounds and five shillings to £29.15s.0d. in 1903.
Gloucestershire Echo, 1st March 1983 – £400 for hospital charities: Years of raising money for charity by Mrs Betty Robbins and her husband Jim, who died recently, culminated with the handover of a total of £400 at her pub, the Bell Inn in Bath Road in Bath Road, Cheltenham, at the weekend. Mrs Robbins is leaving the Bell later this week.
A sum of £200 was presented to the Eye Therapy Trust at Cheltenham General Hospital, and accepted by eye consultant Mr Douglas Thompson, the result of recent collections in the pub. The cash will go towards the trust’s £10,000 appeal to buy teaching kits to train staff in the use of eye treatment equipment.
Gloucestershire Echo, Friday 13th September 1985 – Cheers! Landlord plans charity walk: Cheltenham pub landlord Tom Reilly and three of his regulars are tonight launching a heavyweight assault on Gloucestershire’s roads – with two aims in view. For Mr Reilly, who runs the Bell Inn, Bath Road, and his companions hope to raise £500 for the Intensive Care Unit at Cheltenham General Hospital, and lose a few excess pounds on a sponsored 100-mile walk this weekend.
Mr Reilly, bank employee Mr David Turner and computer experts John Mahoney and Tom Tihanyi, set off to Broadway via Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Pershore and Evesham, and back in time for opening time on Sunday evening. Said Mr Reilly: “We are all a lttle overweight – the average is about 15 or 16 stone. Our walk, which is exactly 100 mils, will hopefully get a few pounds off us, and raise money for the hospital.”
He added: “With the sponsorship we have at the moment between is we should raise about £500. This will mean that we shall have raised something like £2,000 for the Intensive Care Unit over the last two-and-a-half years.”
Gloucestershire Echo, 15th December 1986 – Bell rings up £200: A pub which has raised more than £4,000 for Cheltenham General Hospital has handed over yet another cheque. Landlord of the Bell Inn, Bath Road, Mr Tom Reiley and his wife Frances presented the money for the Intensive Care Unit to charge nurse Mr Alan Scott. Also attending the ceremony were former mayor Coun. Peter Pennell and pub regular, David Turner.
Mrs Reiley said they raised the £200 with competitions, barbecues and a “swear bottle” on the bar: “We catch them at it every time and the bottle fills up pretty quick,” she said.
Gloucestershire Echo, 21st January 1992 – Charity ‘fines’: Bad language was in a good cause at the Bell Inn in Cheltenham, where 10p ‘fines’ for swearing have raised £340 for charity. Landlord Thomas Riley (sic) and his wife, Francis (sic), will give the cash to the town’s Cobalt Cancer Centre appeal for a £1.5 million magnetic body scanner.
Gloucestershire Echo, Friday 27th June 1997 – MP to try pub grub: The landlords of Cheltenham’s Bell Inn in Bath Road are hoping to win parliamentary approval for their food. Members of the Parliamentary Beer club are setting out to sample menus across the country to mark National Pub Food Week with good dishes rewarded with a certificate.
Cheltenham MP Nigel Jones. who is expecting to resume his post as vice-chairman of the club in the new parliament, is doing the rounds in his constituency area and the Bell Inn proprietors Chris and June Evans have invited him to taste their food. Mrs Evans said: “We haven’t fixed a date for his visit. If they’re giving certificates for good pub food, we’d like to have one.”
Gloucestershire Echo, 23rd April 2001 – Girl helped by raffle: Publican Chris Evans set the ball rolling when a charity asked for funds to help a disabled Zambian girl. Agnes Chisapa, from the village of Chilonga, lost the use of her legs as a child and was confined to a wheelchair. Hearing of her plight, the Winchcombe-based Friends of Chilonga vowed to raise £400 for a new wheelchair but a radio appeal for cash yielding nothing. When Mr Evans, the landlord of the Bell Inn, in Bath Road, Cheltenham, heard about her plight, he stepped in and organised a raffle at the pub, raising £125. The rest of the money was donated by the Cleeve Vale Rotary Club.
In August 2008 some residents of Belmore Place complained about customers from the Bell Inn and the Bath Tavern spilling out from the pubs “into their once quiet and peaceful private road.” Belmore Place intersects the two adjacent pubs in Bath Road. One resident, an unnamed male aged 43, told the ‘Gloucestershire Echo’: “We are at our wits end. There are only twelve houses in Belmore Place yet we have two pubs on our doorstep. We now have to put up with people smoking and drinking outside our houses late into the night. All we want is a quiet life without being disturbed by the constant noise coming from these two public houses.” Perhaps I might suggest that the residents who complained had actually chosen to live in Belmore Place where the two pubs had been trading for generations.
Punch Taverns owned the Bell Inn in 2005, but it is believed the pub is now owned by Heineken. The rapidly changing ownership and names of pub companies over the last few decades make determining who owns licensed premises difficult. The hanging inn sign of the Bell has the logo of Greenall’s, a defunct pub company that had evolved from a regional brewer in Cheshire, that ceased brewing to concentrate on their expanding pub national pub chain. Greenall Whitley was founded in 1762 at St. Helens and the Warrington Brewery was established in 1787. In 1978 Greenall Whitley purchased the respected Nottingham brewery James Shipstone & Sons, and closed it down. They will also be remembered for closing down the wonderful Simpkiss Brewery in Brierley Hill – a true Black Country institution – and literally pouring their beers down the drain.
Mr Evans said: “The building is owned by Peter Glanville and my wife and I have been running The Bell Inn in a self employed capacity since January 1995. Now I find out that Peter has applied for planning permission. We moved into the pub nearly 30 years ago and it has been quite a good business. We have four bed and breakfast rooms which do well and Sunday lunch. The business is well worth keeping going.” Mr Evans said: “I have not been thinking about retiring yet, if Donald Trump can run a country, I can run a pub.”
Gloucester News Centre (online). 30th October 2025:
Cheltenham’s “last remaining Regency inn” faces an uncertain future as “terrible” plans to turn most of it into flats have been approved. By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
Publican Chris Evans, 79, who runs The Bell Inn in Bath Road, says he was surprised by the latest proposals for the historic building which was built in 1809.
Borough planners have granted permission for Peter Glanville’s latest scheme to convert 70 Bath Road into three flats, one studio flat, a one-bed flat and a two-bed maisonette with a courtyard garden.
“It’s terrible,” Mr Evans said, who is proud to have been running a successful establishment for more than 30 years. This is the last remaining Regency inn in Cheltenham. We do drinks, food and accommodation which is what an inn is supposed to do. And this is the only remaining one that carries on like that. It’s not failing, it was heaving in here last weekend. i’ve got five part time staff, my wife and I live here and have done for 30 years.”
Mr Evans said his patrons, who are mostly from St Luke’s, are totally against the proposals. “When the first lot of plans were put in we got over 750 signatures against the development,” he said. I’m very surprised the council has approved it. They didn’t even discuss it. It’s just a crying shame anybody could want to shut a pub like this down. It is part of Cheltenham’s history. It’s been here since 1809 for God’s sake. And how the council can possibly agree to it, I really don’t know. They didn’t even bother to send it to the committee. Some planning officer approved it. This is a heritage public house.”
Mr Evans has yet to hear from the owner of the property about what this planning decision will mean for his inn. In the meantime, he intends to continue to serve his loyal customers as normal. Among those who are concerned about this latest decision is Rich Newman, who spearheaded the previous campaign to save the pub. The council has registered the inn as an asset of community value, which, should the site come up for sale, would give residents a chance to buy it.
Mr Newman asked if borough chiefs would take into account the petition and public support for The Bell when considering the plans at council’s full meeting earlier this month. Council chiefs said at the time they could not directly comment on The Bell Inn as it was subject to a live planning application.
Mr Newman said: “Cheltenham Borough Council is fully aware that removing the lodgings and food provided by The Bell Inn would diminish its functionality such that the inn will have no choice but to close. The council is also aware of the large public support and petition associated with The Bell. And furthermore it is this council themselves who placed upon The Bell an ‘asset of community value’ thanks to the large public pressure garnered during the first threat. Despite all this, the public support, the petition and asset of community value… the council has decided to disregard all this and allow the Georgian pub to be converted into luxury apartments.
With devolution on its way, and the merger of the councils very likely, this will be the council’s legacy. Shame on the council for this, for their inaction and complacency. Many years from now when some former Borough councillor says ‘there’s not enough pubs any more’, I’ll be there to tell them ‘yes, specifically because of you and your choice to close them down’. “
The Borough Council confirmed planning permission has been granted for the inn and public objections as well as other relevant considerations were thoroughly assessed by the officer. And the authority explained it was not called to the planning committee, this is something which was within the gift of borough councillors. The proposals are for conversion of part ground and upper floors to provide three flats with courtyard garden and a retained dual alternative ground floor commercial space or public house use .
“We recognise that this outcome is disappointing for the current landlord who has managed the premises for many years,” a council spokesperson said. “However, the role of the planning department is to consider the applicant’s submission against planning law and policy.”
Gloucestershire Echo, 10th February 2005 – Dad’s Army patrols town: Here’s a scene that might jog a few memories for people who were around during the Second World War. It shows the Home Guard training on the corner of Bath Road and Oriel Road. You can see The Tavern and The Bell Inn in the background.
It was sent in by a reader who had it delivered to his house but it was addressed to a Mr J.H. Long, who no longer lives there.
Landlords at the Bell Inn include:
1850,1859 Valentine Cooper (bankrupt in March 1858. Listed as innkeeper, fly proprietor, grocer and baker)
1862,1866 Thomas Vizard
1870 Henry Humphreys
1878 George Houghton
1883 Frederick Savory
1885 Mrs Esther Winn
1890 George Godwin ‘Deaths: On June 21st at the Bell Inn, Bath Road, Cheltenham (of consumption), George Godwin, late of the Birches Farm, Berry Hill, Coleford, aged 51)’
1891 Esther Godwin
1902 John Carter
1903,1906 Henry Hoskins (died 1st September 1909)
1919,1927 Dan Lapper
1944,1954 Mr and Mrs F M Long
1983 Jim and Betty Robbins (Betty Robbins died on 19th May 1989 at her home in Dorchester, aged 66, wife of the late Jim Robbins)
1985,1992 Thomas and Frances Reilly
1995 – 2025 Chris and June Evans