Laughing Cat, 39 Sherborne Street, Cheltenham

I think this must be a new one for you, and one of my favourite names of an old pub in Cheltenham – the Laughing Cat, 39 Sherborne Street.

This address is probably most well known in Cheltenham for the promotional zinc figure of a Victorian master chimney sweep in frock coat and top hat which was once mounted high on its wall between the first floor windows. I believe this is now at the Wilson. The sweep most associated with it was Frederick Fields, but I don’t think it was his originally.

Anyway, in a Gloucestershire Echo article on pressreader.com/uk/gloucestershire-echo on the chimney sweep figure, it reports that, “the building was once a pub, cheerfully named the Laughing Cat, but in 1855 became the premises of a chimney sweep named James Short.” While on the cheltonia.wordpress.com website, in its list of “Vanished Pubs” it describes the Laughing Cat as “an early pub in Sherborne Street which doesn’t seem to have existed beyond the 1850s.”

In the 1847 Hunt & Co. Directory, under “Beer Retailers” I found listed “Penn Wm. 39, Sherborne street” so I think William Penn must have been the landlord of the Laughing Catthen.

Then in the 1851 and 1852 Edwards Directories, there are two “Beer Retailers” listed with just a Sherborne Street address (no number). They are T. Lewis and J.P. Mitchell. I think that perhaps one of them was here and the other at the Butcher’s Arms because I have a landlord for the Sherborne Arms. Unfortunately though, I don’t know which one would have been where.

Regards,

Alan Jones