Clarence Square and Wellington Square were built during the town’s rapid expansion in the nineteenth century. Both squares formed part of John Forbes’ original plan for the Pittville Estate. Clarence Square was named after the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV), while Wellington Square honoured the Duke of Wellington, who visited Cheltenham several times in the early 19th century. Development began earlier in Wellington Square, where four houses were built on the north side in 1826–27. In Clarence Square, construction began slightly later, in 1832–33.
By 1840, Clarence Square was largely complete, apart from a few houses on the south side and the entirely undeveloped west side. Around March 1840, a Prestbury carpenter, Nathaniel Walford, agreed to purchase the whole of the west side from Joseph Pitt for £1,100. At the 1841 census, all ten houses in the planned terrace were under construction, and were completed by 1844.
Evidence from title deeds suggests that Walford built three houses himself (now Nos. 20, 22, and 23) and sold the remaining plots to seven other builders. These builders were responsible for financing and completing their own houses, however, the process was fraught with difficulties: in at least five cases, builders failed to complete their houses, and unfinished structures were sold on or repossessed by lenders.
Little is known about Walford himself. A carpenter and speculative builder, in 1841 he was living in Prestbury with his wife Harriet and six children. He had previously undertaken work elsewhere in Pittville, including building a house in Segrave Place and developing Leamington House on Prestbury Road. His career, however, was marked by financial difficulties and in 1836 he became an insolvent debtor and spent time in Gloucester Jail, although he later recovered sufficiently to continue building.
Architecturally, Clarence Square West is notable for its Tudor Gothic style, which contrasts with the classical design of the rest of the square. The identity of its designer is uncertain. One possibility is Henry Spering Merrett, briefly employed as Pittville’s architect between 1835 and 1837. Surviving records show he worked on a design for the west side of Clarence Square, however, since the terrace itself appears to have been completed several years later, uncertainty remains over whether his plans were ever used. Merrett later left Cheltenham, and little is known of his architectural career thereafter.
Among the builders was William Williams, a timber merchant who constructed No. 29. He provides the key link between Clarence Square West and Wellington Square West. In 1845, three years after Joseph Pitt’s death, Williams purchased the entire west side of Wellington Square for £710.
The development of Wellington Square West followed a different timeline. Only Nos. 1–5 (originally called Eton Place) existed by the 1851 census, with the remaining houses built between 1856 and 1861. As in Clarence Square, Williams built one house himself (No. 5) and sold the other plots. Several of the later houses were constructed by his sons, James and Elisha.
Turning to No. 1 Wellington Square, in May 1849, Captain John Grattan Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness, founder of the Dublin brewery, agreed to buy the plot from Williams for £148.
Captain Guinness was born in 1783, a. He had served in the East India Company’s Madras Service, later becoming a sales agent for his father in Liverpool. Widowed in 1826, he remarried in 1829 and eventually settled in Cheltenham by the mid-1840s. He likely commissioned the house soon after arriving and seems to have been living there by 1847. However, his occupation was brief: he died in March 1850, aged 67.
Remarkably, the Guinness family retained ownership of the house for another seventy-four years. Following his wife’s death, it was duly put up for auction by the surviving trustee of his will, Dr Arthur Grattan Guinness, his eldest son by his first marriage – who although he never appears to have lived in the house, did practice as a doctor in Cheltenham between around 1868 and 1871.
The auction sale took place in June 1872, the purchaser, for £990, being one of Arthur’s half-brothers, the Revd Robert Wyndham Guinness, who was curate at St Mary’s church between 1864 and 1867 and who had in fact lived at 1 Wellington Square with his mother for some years before moving to London in 1868. It was his son, the Revd Percy Wyndham Guinness, who inherited the house and eventually sold it to a College Bursar named Bertie Greening in 1924, the purchase price being just £650, several hundred pounds less than it had sold for back in 1872, an indication perhaps of the depressed state of Cheltenham’s housing market in the early 20th century. He in turn sold the house for £825 to a Mrs Emlyn in 1940 and her executors sold it to a Captain Evans for £2,225 nine years later – an indication of how house prices in the town had by then begun their inexorable mid-20th century rise!
Between 1868 and 1924, the house was occupied by a succession of tenants, including military officers, a draper who later became mayor, a widow, and a solicitor. These occupants illustrate the varied social character of Cheltenham during this period.
Much remains to be discovered about both terraces and their residents. One mystery, however, persists: the identity of the architect behind the distinctive Tudor Gothic design of these buildings. Whether it was Merrett, Williams, or someone else entirely, the answer remains unknown—and the question continues to intrigue historians today.
This history was researched and shared by local historian Dr Steven Blake. Click here to read a digital copy of his book Pittville 1824-1860: A Scene of Gorgeous Magnificence.