Talk:Cheltenham

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Contents 1 Article name 2 Internationally Known? 3 Lists of schools 4 Francis Close 5 Tallest Clock? 6 Images 7 Category:Cheltenham 8 Charles Irving 9 MP for Tewkesbury? 10 Trinity Church link 11 map 12 Major Employers

[edit] Article name

Somebody moved this to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, I have moved it back because:

1. Almost all of the links to "Cheltenham" go to the town in England [1].
2. Cheltenham in England is much larger than all of the other places called Cheltenham, and a precedent for this has already been set at Exeter, York etc

G-Man 19:46, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Internationally Known?

The private schools may well be, but Pate's always seems to get better exam results. And it's free! Vanky 20:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

That might be because one lets people in on ability, the other on financial ability. However, sorry to disappoint you old Patesian, but it's Cheltenham Ladies College and Cheltenham College which are the best known. Of course, I think it should be Cleeve School because I went there :) --kingboyk 20:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

lol :-) That seems entirely fair, but I'm just a tad concerned about how far one can prove this sort of thing... Vanky 13:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it could be proved or not. I guess a survey of national and international newspaper coverage of the time would give some indication, but I don't have the time for that right now. Speaking from experience (irrelevant to the article but fine for the Talk page) having travelled a lot, I get one of 3 reactions when I say I'm from Cheltenham: 1) the most usual - a blank stare 2) oh the Gold Cup town 3) Cheltenham Ladies College.

Is this just some friendly banter or do you have any specific improvement in mind? If you do, let's discuss it here or just go ahead and do it - I don't claim any ownership of the article you know! I will however edit any attempt to push claims that Cheltenham == Pates Grammar School or to promote it beyond it's current mention - not that you would do that, of course :) Indeed, I think the article is of a higher quality than when I started with it but is still far from perfect, so please get stuck in. --kingboyk 13:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Bit of both really- I wouldn't want to push anything beyond what is enyclopaedic. It's just that we must be careful when making apparantly unsubstantiated claims... From personal experience, people do seem to know about the ladies college, but I don't find it's the same for the boy's college. I've seen people get told off for claims like that...

Anyway- the last time you invited people to be bold & get stuck in, you reverted me :P

Seriously, keep up the good work- I'm always happy to help out with all things cheltenham (and Beatles!) related. Very nice to have made your acquaintance! Vanky 13:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Nah I didn't revert you if you remember right, you reverted me and I went for a compromise :P

You're right about unsourced claims but on the other hand the article was full of em and I think I've made it closer to neutral. I think you may be right too regarding notability...

Cheltenham is famous for it's private schools, most notably Cheltenham College and the Cheltenham Ladies' College; the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the flagship race of British steeplechase horseracing; and the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.

I take it this the paragraph in question? I'll let you open the bidding, let's see what we can come up with.

By the way, do you know much about Apple Films? It's a Beatles related article which needs some work. --kingboyk 13:59, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll give it a go... I'll also have a look at Apple Films sometime too... So much in my head- need to add a Chomsky quote to the Bill Clinton page whilst I can still remember it.. Apologies for rhe ramblings.. Vanky 14:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, how rude of me - nice to make your acquaintance too! I've edited your edit, without changing much in meaning. It's better than what I had written previously, what do you think? Edit away if it's still not right. --kingboyk 16:35, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Yep, I'm perfectly happy with that, thank you! Let's see what effect the waves of time have on this... Yay teamwork! Vanky 17:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Someone will come along and zap our work with an infinitely better edit, probably :) Oh well. Good new edit, I'll leave you with the last word for now. I'm surprised there's no article about the Lit Fest, but I've searched through Wikipedia to page 5 of the results and I've found nothing. --kingboyk 17:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Surely this paragraph should include something about Cheltenham's Regency architecture and in particular the Pump Room which is a Grade I listed building where one can still sample the spa waters today. There could probably be a whole section devoted to the architecture of the town. How about mentions too of the fact that Cheltenham College was the setting for the Lindsay Anderson film If... and also that much of the Wendy Craig series Butterflies was filmed in Cheltenham. Dahliarose 09:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of schools

Do we really need a list of schools in Cheltenham? It seems completely pointless and makes the article a prime target for edit wars. I suggest we keep the encyclopedic ones (i.e. the world-renowned ones) and not having what basically amounts to a list of others. StephenHildrey 11:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to agree with you, and that's how I originally wrote it. However, if the schools have blue links I guess they have to be linked to from somewhere. What's the norm? How do other towns handle it? Perhaps the non-renowned ones should be in the See Also list? --kingboyk 14:54, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, the Grammar School's gone again... I'd like to think that it was the best school in Gloucestershire, in terms of results, unless that doesn't mean anything... Vanky 15:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

It's in the new Schools list, with the text about it being high performing hidden inside a HTML comment. Note that my school isn't on this list at all, so I wasn't acting through any bias :-) Rather, I was persuaded by Stephen Hildrey's argument that only the world famous ones need to be mentioned. Certainly the second slowly building paragraph of namechecks for run of the mill comprehensives (of the sort I went too!) wasn't helpful to the reader...

Perhaps you could work on the new list by adding a sentence for each school, including Pates?

Alternatively, if you want to restore Pates to the main text then go ahead. --kingboyk 16:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Just a general comment- I'd prefer a wider consensus really... Is Cheltenham College really internationally known? Vanky 19:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Vanky, mate, go ahead and move it from the main text if you don't think so! :-) (My only comment would be that internationally known is a bit OTT, I'd settle for nationally known). --kingboyk 12:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC) (Good luck waiting for concensus, but I think for now we have to do the best we can - there's only 3 contributors to this talk page in a year. Another alternative is peer review, but I don't think that's necessary - it seems we can probably agree on having just the ladies college in the main text).

I'd agree with that really. The boy's college is a very average public school, and Pate's may be good, but I doubt that it's famous. Leave just the ladies' college. Vanky 15:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not from Cheltenham and the only one I'd heard of is the Ladies' College. Seeing a list of other schools (most of which are fairly generic school names) doesn't add any value, and only slightly more when they link to more complete pages. There's lots of scope for NN editing here... StephenHildrey 20:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Well we are building a "nice" list of schools now (rolls eyes) :) --kingboyk 03:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Reverend Francis Close has very strong links with Cheltenham. He founded Cheltenham Boys College and after his death the Dean Close Memorial School (shortened to Dean Close School) was founded. He also built the first "free" church in Cheltenham (St. Pauls Church in the St. Pauls area, next to Brunswick Street) If you're going to mention Cheltenham Boys College then you've got to mention Dean Close School too. -- JonRB 09:23, 04 May 2006

That's the problem you see, it causes these never ending debates. Your comment "If you're going to mention Cheltenham Boys College then you've got to mention Dean Close School too" has settled it for me - Ladies College only. It's the only one that the average person on the street (outside Cheltenham) has likely heard of. --kingboyk 08:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. You're probably right - after all, the list of public schools in Cheltenham that people have heard of (in descending order) is definitely Green-Fly, Boys, then DCS. :o) -- JonRB 4 May 2006

Hooray for consensus!! :-) Vanky 12:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Yay! :o) -- JonRB 12:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Guess that the school issue became too contentious. :o) -- JonRB 14:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this education section needs to be expanded to include all schools. Encyclopedias should not make judgments about the quality of schools. The well-known schools could be mentioned in an introductory paragraph and then there should be simple tables of the private and state schools. Have a look at what has been done on the Bath page which has so-called featured article status. Dahliarose 11:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Francis Close

A page on Francis Close might be good - his influence is all over Cheltenham. I haven't got time to do it right now though. -- JonRB 12:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tallest Clock?

Is there any evidence to support the claim that the clock pictured is the tallest in the world? Shouldn't say things without a source, really. — Steverwanda 13:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

I've had a (not totally successful) go at dispersing the images amongst the article. These two were left over. I'm sure someone (that's you Vanky ;-)) can rearrange or prune out the pics we don't need.

--kingboyk 23:49, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

lol.. Nice job- not sure we need two photos of that Wilson statue on the same page though.. Swap one with one of these left over? It's much better than the image dump it used to be though :-) Vanky 00:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

User:Historian's work. He's editing as we speak so I'll wait until he's finished. (Lightning quick reply by the way) --kingboyk 00:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree about the Wilson statue. I think we ought to have a photo of the Municipal Offices, but the current one is in my humble opinion not of the highest technical standard. So, which photo(s) are we going to remove? Should we put “The Minotaur and the Hare” back in? --kingboyk 13:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Cheltenham

I've created a new Cheltenham category and subcategories thereof. Please put any new Cheltenham-related articles into one of these categories. --kingboyk 23:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Charles Irving

I'll say upfront that his politics didn't match mine :), but I think the above-mentioned gentleman deserves an article as the town's long running MP prior to Nigel Jones, should anyone care to start one. --kingboyk 13:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MP for Tewkesbury?

Just posing the question, but why is an MP for Tewkesbury listed on this entry about Cheltenham? Jimbob muppet 21:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't put it there (and would agree with removing it) but I suspect the Tewkesbury constituency takes in parts of Cheltenham?? The delineation between the 2 towns is a bit crazy to say the least. I, for example, live in Cheltenham postal and telephone areas but Tewkesbury borough and constituency. I wouldn't be surprised if parts of Cheltenham are within the Tewkesbury MP's remit! --kingboyk 21:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... does seem a bit odd, but if there is a part of the population of Chelt that for historical reasons is represented by the MP for Tewkes, I suppose it's fair enough.Jimbob muppet 22:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Let's see. If nobody objects within the next few days I'll remove it. I think it's unnecessary and confusing. --kingboyk 22:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Will see if I can do some digging about boundaries to clarify this. Jimbob muppet 09:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

As of the last election the far section of the Leckhampton Road going up towards Leckhampton Hill (still within Cheltenham town boundaries) voted with Tewkesbury. - eine

Thanks - haven't got very far with the digging mentioned in previous comment. As the MP for Tewks is also MP for parts of Chelt then I guess he should be there. Jimbob muppet 11:03, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I live in Hatherley (the other side of Cheltenham!), yet we are still counted as the Tewkesbury constituancy... See gerrymandering! Vanky 12:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trinity Church link

Hello - I added the link to Trinity Church. It is notable for being the largest Anglican church outside of London. It has seen tremendous growth in the last few years and is influential in the town. Will add a full article when I can - only just discovered Wikipedia.

Holy Trinity Church in Cheltenham is one of England’s largest church communities, with more than 1000 people worshipping regularly at its Portland Street building. It was founded in 1824 as an overflow venue for the town centre’s parish church, and its first minister was Francis Close, founder of Dean Close School. Two years ago, the church purchased a three-storey building nearby to accommodate its growing family. This forms the base for its extensive youth and children’s work, as well as the administration facilities. (from the Diocese of Gloucester website)

Ah OK. Shows how little I know. Probably it's worthy of a mention and a link then. --kingboyk 14:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Francis Close didn't found Dean Close School, it was founded in memory of him after he died. But, granted, it is yet another thing that links him to Cheltenham. -- JonRB 14:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] map

Image:GloucestershireCheltenham.png should be probably readded side by side to the dotmap. Morwen - Talk 10:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major Employers

Is Cheltenham and Gloucester's headwuarters in Cheltenham? I thought it was in Barnwood, Gloucester.