Letters Wine Vaults, Montpellier, Cheltenham

 

In your listing for Letters Wine Vaults, you have the location as Montpellier and say that the actual location remains a mystery. I can help with this.

 

You don’t want to know how long I spent trying to hunt this one down – especially with that sizeable £102 annual rateable value in 1891. I figured it must be close to either the Rotunda or the Queens Hotel to warrant that. As it happens though, it wasn’t really actually in Montpellier at all, but in the Promenade!

 

After scouring directories for ages looking for Letters Wine Vault unsuccesfully, I started looking through relevant years for the landlords you have listed, Frederick George Houghton 1891 and James Cotton 1903. The latter was the key.

 

I found J. Cotton listed in the 1903 Annuaire for “Messrs. Boyer & Co. 19 Promenade Villas.” It took me a while to work out that Promenade Villas was the old name given to the properties on the east side of the Promenade. Boyer & Co. were Wine Merchants and I managed to trace them back at 19 Promenade Villas to 1868. Before this from 1854 – 1858 and 1860 – 1863 it is listed as Boyer G. & Co., wine merchants at 19 Promenade Villas.

 

Earlier than this, from 1850 – 1852 19 Montpellier Villas is home to another wine merchant’s, Liddle & Co. (sometimes Liddle R. – 1851 Annuaire or Liddell R. – 1852 Annuaire).

 

R. Liddell is listed for 19 Promenade Villas from 1844 – 1849 (and I presume a wine merchant then too). In 1842 & 1843 he is listed at 21 Promenade Villas, but I don’t know if there had been a slight renumbering, some new building, or the breaking down of properties (both Miss Austin and Mrs. Compton are listed for 19 Promenade Villas in 1842 & 1843!).

 

Anyway, the really interesting thing is that this R. Liddle/Liddell is Richard Liddell (name recorded in full in the 1847 Hunt & Co. Directory), and in the 1839 & 1840 Annuaires, the only R. Liddell is the proprietor of The Queens Hotel. What is more, before this, in the 1838 Annuaire he is listed as the proprietor of The Clarence Hotel (the original one in Crescent Place, now John Dower House, rather than the later one from the 1840s at 19 Clarence Street). The Clarence or Royal Clarence Hotel in Crescent Place, was built circa. 1812 as Cheltenham’s first purpose-built boarding house for visitors coming to take the spa waters by Richard Liddell, and was originally called Liddell’s Boarding House. It only became the Clarence or Royal Clarence Hotel after the Duchess of Clarence stayed there when opening Clarence Street in 1826. It closed circa. 1838 and Richard Liddell moved on to the Queens Hotel. He wasn’t proprietor there for very long though, before moving to Promenade Villas – presumably as a wine merchant…and this is why the annual rateable value of the property was so high: 19 Promenade Villas was the property in the Prom where W.H. Smith used to be and where Anthropologie is now.

 

How do I know this is the same as Letters Wine Vaults? Well, on the gloucestershireheritagehub website, I found a “draft notice to the Superintendent of Police” dated December 1903, from J. Cotton (landlord of Letters Wine Vaults that year) applying for a transfer of licence from 19 Promenade Villas “known as Letters Wine Vaults” to a wine merchant’s in Hewlett Road. 

 

“Messrs. Boyer & Co.” are still listed at 19 Promenade Villas in the 1904 Annuaire, and “Boyer & Co. Wine Merchants” in the 1904 Built-Leonard Directory. But in the 1905 Annuaire, 19 Promenade Villas is listed to “Original Brewery Ltd.” then from the 1906 Annuaire to “Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son.”

 

So now, we not only know where Letters Wine Vaults were located (and why the annual rateable value was so high), but can trace the property right back to a former proprietor of both The Queens Hotel and the original Clarence or Royal Clarence Hotel / Liddell’s Boarding House in 1812 (which later became the HQ of the County Constabulary and later still the HQ of the Countryside Commission, John Dower House).

 

Cheers,

 

Alan Jones