Cheltenham Kitchener

About

We're one of the UK's first cookshops, selling the best in cookware from potato peelers to coffee machines. Stock brands such as Zwilling J.A. Henckels, Le Creuset, All Clad & Alessi.

Story

Anyone walking through the doors of Kitcheners, the Cheltenham kitchenware shop, will see that there are more particular reasons to wonder what the shop has been. The internal architecture is particularly unusual in two respects. On the one hand, facing customers who walk in the front door, about two-thirds of the way across the main shop floor, is an ornately carved lateral wooden beam, which acts as the support for a clock-face. On the other hand, there is a cash desk, on the left-hand side of the shop, which is demarcated by wooden half-walls and vertical beams, creating a sort of enclosed, private space. Who built these peculiar features, and what was their purpose?
Cheltenham became very fashionable in the late 18th and early 19th century, and this resulted in an explosion in construction of new buildings, residences and places of business, particularly on plots of land which were formerly open land or fields. One area which was virtually untouched in 1804, from a glance at the surviving maps, is the Montpellier district. By 1840, Montpellier had been entirely redeveloped. It is therefore possible to date fairly exactly when Queen's Circus was built. Several sources claim that the Queen's Hotel—which stands at the northern-most point of Montpellier, looking down towards the Promenade—was finished sometime between 1836 and 1838 (at a cost of £50,000). It is reasonable to assume that the Queen's Circus—the small, oval area of buildings opposite the Hotel, on the other side of what is now Montpellier Avenue—was built around the same time, and took its name from the newly-built Queen's Hotel. According to various sources, the Imperial Spa (as well as a riding school) had formerly stood on the site of the Hotel. These were apparently acquired in 1830 by “Robert and Charles Gearrad” who, being both architects, designed and built the new Hotel.
We can be fairly sure that the Queen's Circus, and hence the premises of the modern kitchen shop, were also built around this time, because of details found in the land register. Maps from 1834 suggest that the plot of land corresponding to the Queen's Circus was then just open field with nothing built upon it. The modern Charges Register lists details of a restrictive covenant agreed in 1838, the substance of which was to prevent the freeholder or any occupier of Queen's Circus from making alterations to the front of the buildings which did not conform with various architectural specifications, and also from opening up a “Beer shop, Gin shop or other offensive...business of any kind”. What is of interest is that two of the original parties to the covenant are named as “Robert William Jearrard and Charles Jearrard”: surely the same two persons as are credited with the construction of the Queen's Hotel, given the similarity in names and dates.
Customers who remember the premises from the 1950s suggest that it was then, at least for a time, a local butcher's, though no documentary evidence to support this proposition has yet been discovered. By 1965, usage had changed once again. Kelly's trade directory of Cheltenham for that year lists one CE Baker as carrying on the business of television engineer at 4 Queen's Circus. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the decorative features of the shop were then entirely hidden from view behind internal panelling designed, presumably, to make the shop more practical as a display area. It has also been suggested that the shop was at one time a pharmacy, but whether this was before the 1950s or after its stint as a television shop is not clear. If this was the case, it might explain the presence of the gaol-like cash-desk, which might then have been used to keep prescription-only drugs away from customers' prying hands, as well as being the obvious point for making sales.
As for how long the shop has been in its present form—Kitcheners—living memory provides the details. Kitcheners has been under its present management since 1988; it was bought in that year from its previous owners, but had been trading as a kitchen shop under its present name since the earlier date of 1973. This corresponds roughly with the Kelly's Directories, which list Cheltenham Kitchener for the first time in 1975. Usage within the building has changed a little: although the ground floor has been the main shop floor since Kitcheners' inception, the basement floor was only opened up as additional display and storage space from 1997. Its affectionate name amongst staff members‏—the Deli—points to its immediate preceding usage as the premises of a Delicatessen, selling coffee and foods. The principal internal features of the shop continue to be, on the one hand, the ornate wooden beam and clock; and on the other, the old wooden cash desk, which nowadays creates a well-defined 'staff area' and till.