Martin Edwards has compiled a list of all the licensed premises in Cheltenham in 1844. He has identified a beer house called the Cottage Brewery Inn as listed in Back Street. This area of Cheltenham is now part of Swindon Road and Martin’s research gives a possible location of the Cottage Brewery in the Monson Avenue area – opposite the old Cheltenham Original Brewery. There was apparently a Cottage Place here, and Martin thinks the Cottage Brewery could have been located at 2 Cottage Place.
This is in the same area as the later Gamecock Inn and is now the site of the multi-storey car park.
Hi Geoff,
I think Martin Edwards is spot on identifying Cottage Place as the most likely home of the Cottage Brewery Inn of 1844. Cottage Place was located where Monson Avenue is now, but the buildings on the 1855-7 Old Town Survey map started a little further back, running from the back portion of the multi-storey car park (opposite Northfield Passage) to near enough Northfield Terrace.There was a Timber Yard between Northfield Passage and Northfield Terrace in 1855 and probably at the time that the Cottage Brewery Inn existed. The Honorable Katherine Monson (after whom Monson Avenue is named) was a property developer in the early Georgian/Regency period – unusual in not only being a female developer, but also gentry – the eldest daughter of the 2nd Baron Monson of Burton, Lincolnshire. She built the Georgian House which used to be the ticket office of the Black & White coach station and the terrace of houses running along the northern side of St. Margaret’s Road to the junction with North Place.
There was another Timber Yard behind too, in Dunalley Street. I expect there were a lot of thirsty Timber Yard workers when the pub/brewery was operating.
Regards
Alan Jones
Apologies that I didn’t include this previously, but I have now found another listing for the Cottage Brewery Inn, in Cottage Place (Monson Avenue) Cheltenham.
In the 1847 Hunt & Co. Directory, listed under “Beer Retailers” is “Mary Towle, Cottage pl., Clarence square.” She doesn’t appear in the 1848 Edwards Directory list of Beer Retailers, so perhaps it had closed/gone by then. But I think the linking Cottage Place to Clarence Square backs up the 1855-7 Old Town Survey map and my earlier description of where Cottage Place was – between Northfield Passage and Northfield Terrace.
And it does give the premises an additional 3 years of existence.
Alan Jones
Landlord:
1844 M. Towle