Cheltenham

Sudeley Castle is a castle located near Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England. The present structure was built in the 15th century and may have... been on the site of a 12th-century castle. The castle has a notable garden, which is designed and maintained to a very high standard. The chapel, St. Mary's Sudeley, is the burial place of Queen Catherine Parr , the sixth wife of King Henry VIII, and contains her marble tomb. Unusual for a castle chapel, St Mary's of Sudeley is part of the local parish of the Church of England. Sudeley is also one of the few castles left in England that is still in residence. Because of this, the castle is only open to visitors on specific dates and private family quarters are closed to the public. Access to private apartments is available though through a guided tour. A castle may have been built on the site during the reign of King Stephen . In 1442, Ralph Boteler who was created Baron Sudeley by Henry VI of England, built the actual castle on its present site using what he had earned fighting in the Hundred Years' War. He built up quarters for servants and men at arms on the double courtyard that was surrounded by a moat.
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Snowshill Manor is a National Trust property located in the village of Snowshill, Gloucestershire, England. Snowshill Manor was the property of... Winchcombe Abbey from 821 until 1539 when the Abbey was confiscated by King Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Between 1539 and 1919 it had a number of tenants and owners until it was purchased by Charles Paget Wade, an architect, artist-craftsman, collector, poet and heir to the family fortune. He restored the property, living in the small cottage in the garden and using the manor house as a home for his collection of objects. He gave the property and the contents of this collection to the National Trust in 1951. There are two aspects of Snowshill Manor: its garden and the manor house, which is now home to Wade's eclectic collection. The garden at Snowshill was laid out by Wade, in collaboration with Arts and Crafts movement architect, M. H. Baillie Scott, between 1920 and 1923 as a series of outside rooms seen as an extension to the house. Features include terraces and ponds. The manor house is a typical Cotswold house, made from local stone; the main part of the house dates from the 16th century.
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Cheltenham Racecourse is a racecourse for horse racing events, located at Prestbury Park, in the suburban village of Prestbury on the outskirts of... the English town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Cheltenham is called the "home of National Hunt racing", largely because it hosts the four-day Cheltenham Festival, held in March of each year and featuring the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The racecourse has a scenic location in a natural amphitheatre just below the escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, at Cleeve Hill, with a capacity of 67,500 spectators. The racecourse also has its own steam railway station, although this no longer connects to the national rail network but is rather the southern terminus of the preserved Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway. The main racecourse has two separate courses alongside each other, the Old Course and the New Course. The New Course has a tricky downhill fence and a longer run-in for steeplechases than the Old Course. Hurdle races over two miles on the New Course also have a slight peculiarity in that most of the hurdles are jumped early on in the race with only two hurdles being jumped in the last seven furlongs.
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Lodge Park was built as a grandstand in the Sherborne Estate near the villages of Sherborne, Aldsworth and Northleach in Gloucestershire, England.... The site is owned by the National Trust and the former grandstand has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building. It is England's only surviving 17th-century deer course and grandstand. In the 19th century Lodge Park was modified into a house, then a row of cottages, and then into a house again. It was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1982, and restored to its original form as a grandstand. Lodge Park is open to the public at advertised times, and the footpaths in the Sherborne Estate are available to the public at all times. In the early 1630s John 'Crump' Dutton created a deer course on his Sherborne Estate; this consisted of a park for containing the deer, a mile-long walled enclosure for the chase, and, overlooking the finish, a grandstand. His grandfather, Thomas Dutton, was descended from the Dutton family of Dutton, Cheshire, and had bought the manor of Sherborne in 1551. As originally constructed, the grandstand consisted of two storeys with a flat roof and a basement.
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Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy, CBE, FSA is an English actor with a long career in the theatre, film and television. Hardy was born in Cheltenham,... England, the son of Jocelyn and Henry Harrison Hardy. His father was headmaster of Cheltenham College. He was educated at Rugby School and Magdalen College, Oxford University where he gained a BA in English. On BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs he described the degree he obtained as "shabby," although he treasures the time spent studying under C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Hardy began his career as a classical actor. In 1959 he appeared as Sicinius opposite Laurence Olivier in Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Peter Hall. He then appeared in Shakespeare's Henry V on stage and in television's An Age of Kings , and subsequently played Coriolanus in and Sir Toby Belch for the BBC Television Shakespeare in 1980. It was while playing Henry V that Hardy developed an interest in medieval warfare, and he later wrote and presented an acclaimed television documentary on the subject of the Battle of Agincourt.
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Michael Edwards , better known as Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, is a British skier who was the first competitor to represent Great Britain in Olympic... ski jumping. At the time, Edwards was the British ski jumping record holder, the world number nine in amateur speed skiing and the stunt jumping world record holder . Edwards was born in Cheltenham, England. A good downhill skier, he narrowly missed out on the GB team for that event for the 1984 Games. To improve his chances to qualify for 1988, he moved to Lake Placid in the US to train and enter races of a higher standard; however, he soon found himself short on funds. To realize his Olympic dream he decided to switch to ski jumping for reasons of cost and easier qualification with no other competing British ski jumpers. Eddie began jumping under the watchful eye of Chuck Berghorn in Lake Placid, NY, using his equipment though he had to wear six layers of socks to make the boots fit. Edwards was handicapped by his weight—at about 82 kg , more than 9 kg heavier than the next heaviest competitor—and by his lack of financial support for training—he was totally self-funded.
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Martin Jarvis, OBE is an English actor. Jarvis was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the son of Denys Harry Jarvis and Margot Lillian Scottney,... and grew up in South Norwood and Sanderstead, South Croydon. Jarvis was educated at Whitgift School, an independent school in Croydon in south London, and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Jarvis trained at RADA, where he won the Vanbrugh Award and the Silver Medal. He has acted in many stage productions in London and abroad, most recently starring alongside Diana Rigg and Natascha McElhone in Joanna Murray-Smith's Honour at London's Wyndham's Theatre until May 2006. He read Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities for the Chivers Audio Books production on cassette, later released on CD by Barnes and Noble Audio Classics. Jarvis has had a long association with the BBC, particularly BBC Radio 4. In the 1980s Michael Frayn's columns for the Guardian and the Observer, described by some as models of the comic essay, were adapted and performed in many voices for BBC Radio 4 by Jarvis. He performs regularly in radio dramas and readings, both comic and serious.
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Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the UK Underground. Farren was the... singer with the proto-punk band The Deviants between 1967 and 1969, releasing three albums. During 1970 he released the solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus which also featured Steve Peregrin Took, John Gustafson and Paul Buckmaster, before ending his music business to concentrate on writing. During the mid-1970s, he briefly revived his musical career, releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson. He has sporadically done musical work since then, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow. Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years.
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Dame Felicity Ann Emwhyla Lott, DBE, FRCM is an English soprano. From her earliest years she was musical, having started studying piano at age 5.... She also played violin and began singing lessons at 12. She is an alumna of Royal Holloway, University of London, obtaining a BA in French and Latin in 1969. During her year in France as part of the degree course from 1967–68, she took singing lessons at the conservatory in Grenoble. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, winning the Principal's Prize. She made her debut in 1975 as Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the English National Opera. In 1976 she appeared in the premiere of Henze's We Come to the River at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and began a long relationship with the Glyndebourne Festival. She has been associated with the works of Richard Strauss including various lieder, the Four Last Songs and the roles of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and the Countess in Capriccio.
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Dame Felicity Joan Palmer, DBE , is an English mezzo-soprano and music professor. She sang soprano roles until 1983. Palmer studied at the Guildhall... School of Music and Drama in London and under Marianne Schech's guidance at the Munich College for Music and Theatre. In April 1970, she won first prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship. She made her operatic debut in 1971 as Dido in Dido and Aeneas with the Kent Opera. In 1973, she made her US debut with the Houston Grand Opera, and in 1975 she made her debut with English National Opera . Her Metropolitan Opera debut was in 2000 as Waltraute . Palmer has performed and recorded Gilbert and Sullivan operas, as Katisha in The Mikado for the ENO and the Welsh National Opera , Dame Carruthers in The Yeomen of the Guard and Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore . In 1998, she played Widow Begbick in the Lyric Opera of Chicago production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In 2003, she performed the role of Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at the Royal Opera House .
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