Bid to put historic Cheltenham on the map in 'beautiful' style
Summary
A prestigious historical map of Cheltenham could soon be produced for the spa town as a campaign is launched to raise £35,000 to fund it. Cheltenham Civic Society’s aim is for the map to be created in partnership with The Historic Towns Trust (HTT), which is a national charity that produces educational atlases and maps that display the history of British towns and cities.
Details
The Civic Society has already set up a project board led by Sarah Staniforth and Adrian Phillips, and including local historians, geographers, heritage experts and educators. Adrian Phillips, who chairs the Civic Society’s planning forum, said: “These maps are beautiful and each one forms a fascinating and easily accessible record of the particular town’s history and heritage.
“Cheltenham thoroughly deserves one of these maps. Ours will be researched, designed and produced over the next year or two.
It will be sold online via HTT’s website – as well as by all good booksellers – and it will probably retail at around £12.” The project board’s first task – which is already underway – is to seek and employ a project coordinator to pull together the information needed and work with HTT on the map’s preparation, with their cartographer producing the detailed artwork.
The project already has initial support of a £10,000 donation from one of their members. As well as appointing the coordinator, the project board has a target of raising a further £25,000 to cover the remaining cost of all the design and production work, plus community engagement and educational outreach activities following publication.
Related stories
Civic Society member Colin Smith, who raised much of the funding for the group’s successful WWI Battlefield Crosses Museum two years ago, has volunteered to undertake this fundraising for the map. In the next few months he will be leading our efforts to secure a main sponsor for the map – with targets likely to include the major employers in the town.
The appointment of the project coordinator should be confirmed in a few days, followed by a project launch event to be held at the Pittville Pump Room on September 15 as part of the Heritage Open Days festival. Though the work might take longer, the project board’s aim is to complete the research and production work by summer next year, in time to publish the completed map in autumn 2027.
An event to unveil the map has already been reserved during the Literature Festival in October that year.
Original source: Cheltenham Civic Society
Report source: Gloucestershire Live