The Palais de Danse was opened on Spencer Street in 1926 and called the Bath Assembly Hall. It was designed by Birmingham architect Horace Bradley for a local entrepreneur, Edith Dowding, who was a partner in the Bath Hotel. The 1920s saw the beginning of a dance craze in Britain and many palaises were built … Read more
The site for the 1831 Town Hall is land at the corner of High Street and Althorpe Street. It was assembled over a long period and in a rather complicated way. The first Town Hall was built by the Leamington Commissioners who had been appointed under the provisions of an 1825 Act of Parliament. They … Read more
Herbert Edward Cox, was born in Coventry in 1870, the fifth of seven children born to James and Sarah Cox of Stoney Stanton Road. He attended the Grammar School, and after the death of his father in 1887, still living in the family home, he trained to paint at the Municipal School of Art in … Read more
(compiled from extracts from ‘living memory’ interviews conducted 2006/2007) Recollections 1920’s-1930’s Over a lifespan of 120 years, there was little structural change in the houses on Althorpe Street from their being built in the mid 1830’s to being demolished in the early1950’s. The street was basically two long rows of terraced houses broken up by … Read more
Beginnings In 1784 Benjamin Satchwell and William Abbotts discovered a spring in Bath Lane in the hamlet of Leamington Priors, and 2 years later opened Abbotts Original Baths. At this time, much of the hamlet and surrounding land was owned by a handful of wealthy families, including the Wise family. In 1783 Bath Lane (not … Read more
Leamington has lost, over the last hundred years or so, three towers. None of these has been of any great architectural merit, although they all have had a measure of curiosity value. The earliest is the so called ‘Pepper pot chapel’, although the Milverton Chapel was its formal title. The chapel, as it was not … Read more
1875-1880 Mr Charles Pratt Charles Pratt was a Picture Dealer who had been born in Leicester in 1825. In 1871 Charles was living at 10 London Road Leicester were he owned an old China and Earthenware shop, Working for him as a servant was Elizabeth Ann Westbury, aged 22. She had come to Leicester to … Read more
Many people refer jokingly to discoveries, inventions, memoirs, as jottings ‘on the back of an envelope’. This is the real thing. In 2011 Leamington History Group inherited an intriguing little archive from local historian Toby Cave. At first sight it was just a small brown cardboard box full of all kinds of scraps of paper … Read more
Do you recognise this building with its decorative carved columns? It’s one known to generations of Leamingtonians as Sabin’s, – the Leamington bread shop and bakery in years gone by. Mona Radford, nee Sabin, was born at the shop in Farley Street, into a family business started by her great grandfather Joseph, who seems to … Read more
Priory Terrace is a short street near the centre of Leamington Spa. One end is between All Saints Parish Church and the main Post Office, near the Pump Rooms; the other end runs into Leam Terrace at the junction with Mill Street. Click on any of the pictures below to enlarge them. The street runs … Read more
Lyndon F (Toby) Cave (left), former architect and noted local historian, who has now relocated to Dorset, presenting a parting gift to Jeff Watkin of Leamington Art Gallery and Museum. The fox is one of the earliest surviving artefacts associated with the ‘new town’ built north of the river in the early 1800s and was … Read more
