CONTEXT 180 : JUNE 2024 25 WHERE HERITAGE AND NATURE MEET orchards to the north of the Gloucester Road were sacrificed from 1919 for the council’s first housing estate, now known as the Poets’ Estate. Bomb damage during the second world war added to the housing problem and after the war population increase gathered momentum. In 1921 Cheltenham’s population was 48,430; in 2021 it was 118,800. Sandfields and Rowanfield are graphic examples. These fields were to the north-west of the town centre and were extensively planted with orchard. Sandfields was filled with houses just before 1939 and Rowanfield shortly after in 1945. Until 1835, the fields had been mainly open arable land shared between the farmers of Alstone and Arle tithings or townships in Cheltenham manor. Sandfields’ name reflected the easily worked nature of the soil. Rowanfield was not distinguished by rowan trees but like Stoke Orchard has a misleading name. The field was where the farmers of Alstone were entitled to graze their animals after the crop had been taken: ‘rowan’ is a corruption of rewain, the old Norman French word for ‘aftermath’.5 When enclosed in 1835, the land allocated to each owner made use of boundaries of former arable strips. Each owner’s land was colour-washed on the 25-inch maps illustrated; these maps were specially prepared in 1911 for the Lloyd George survey of land values. In his People’s Budget of 1909, the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, had pledged to tax landowners on the increase in the value of the land whenever it thereafter changed hands. The 25-inch maps also show numerous orchards in the western half of the county, but here the pressure of housing needs has not been so great and more have survived. There were several owners in Sandfields and several tenants, and some orchards were attached to larger houses built after 1835. Orchard Avenue, Orchard Way, Bramley Road, Laxton Road and Russet Road, an estate of semi-detached houses, was built in 1938-9. Cheltenham Borough Council apparently felt conscious of the destruction of the orchards. When Orchard Drive and Orchard Gardens were suggested, the builders, Pye Bros, were asked to think of different names. Hawthorn Road and Tanners Road were approved instead.6 In 1946, the council approved the layout of the estate at Rowanfield, though building did not start until 1949. By the summer of 1950, George Wimpey and Co had built 394 houses, again mainly semi-detached. The estate had a spacious layout, and a substantial area of Rowanfield was preserved as open space. The Avenues were all named after southern counties: Bedford, Buckingham, Cambridge, Devon, Dorset, Cornwall, Norfolk, Somerset, Surrey and Sussex. Other housing estates were being built on farmland around Cheltenham, though not all were so full of orchards as the two examples described. The town’s expansion is constricted to south and east by the steep scarp slope of the Cotswold hills, making the sacrifice of good horticultural land to the north and west almost inevitable. Only in the 21st century has the importance of traditional orchards for biodiversity been recognised. It may be hoped that the preservation of those orchards which have survived, together with the creation of new orchards and community orchards, will influence attitudes to planning. Rather than adding ever more concentric rings of suburban housing round a town, should a different and more imaginative policy be developed and the value of horticultural land generally be given greater recognition? Acknowledgments Johannes Kip’s engravings are reproduced with the kind permission of Gloucestershire Archives. The Ordnance Survey maps are reproduced with the kind permission of Gloucestershire Archives and of the Ordnance Survey. Anthea Jones was head of history and director of studies at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Now retired, she is the author of several books on Gloucestershire history, including Johannes Kip: the Gloucestershire engravings. Open space preserved as part of Rowanfield ⁵ AH Smith (1964) The Place-Names of Gloucestershire ⁶ J Hodsdon (1997) An Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=