I got involved with the Pittville History Works project by accident. I was tinkering around looking at the nineteenth-century history of Pittville in Cheltenham when the local Friends of Pittville decided to set up a history group.

Pittville was the brainchild and then the financial disaster of local solicitor and entrepreneur Joseph Pitt. He had the idea of developing a large area to the north of Cheltenham as an exclusive gated estate for the gentry. The centrepiece of the design was (and is) the Pittville Pump Room, gazing regally down to Pittville Lake, and beyond that to the smart villas of Pitt’s Pittville and – in the distance – to Cheltenham itself.

The group is busy transcribing the nineteenth-century censuses for Cheltenham, and loading this data on to a (free) website, where it is accessible via some rather neat software devised by Jeffery Triggs, formerly also of the OED, in New Jersey. To this we add further information from Cheltenham directories, and publish articles about Pittville people, Pittville places, and anything else of a historical nature that comes through from the data. It’s worth a look, and then signing up for the newsletter (see the button on the home page).