Cheltenham Festival

The Cheltenham Gold Cup is a Grade 1 National Hunt horse race run on the New Course at Cheltenham Racecourse in England, over a distance of about 3 miles 2½ furlongs (3 miles 2 furlongs and 70 yards, or 5,294 m), and during its running there are 22 fences to be jumped. The race takes place each year during the Cheltenham Festival in March. The steeplechase, which is open to horses aged five years and over, is the most prestigious of all National Hunt events and it is sometimes referred to as the Blue Riband of jump-racing. Its roll of honour features the names of such chasers as Arkle, Best Mate, Golden Miller, Kauto Star, Denman and Mill House. The Gold Cup is the most valuable non-handicap chase in Britain, and in 2021 it offered a total prize fund of £468,750.

Cheltenham Racecourse at Prestbury Park, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, hosts National Hunt horse racing. Its most prestigious meeting is the Cheltenham Festival, held in March, which features several Grade I races including the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase, Ryanair Chase and the Stayers' Hurdle. 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. Cheltenham Racecourse railway station no longer connects to the national rail network, but is 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. The Old Course is the racecourse used for The Showcase, The November Meeting and the first two days of the Cheltenham Festival. There is also a cross-country course which is laid out inside the main racecourse and is used for cross-country steeplechases. The racecourse is the home of The Centaur, one of the largest auditoria in the South West of England. This multiple-use complex seats over 2,000 people for conferences and around 4,000 standing for concerts.[1] It is also home to the Steeplechasing Hall of Fame. From 1999 to 2013, the racecourse was the venue for the annual Greenbelt festival and remains the venue for the Wychwood Music Festival. The University of Gloucestershire holds its graduation ceremony and summer ball at the racecourse. From 2008, the racecourse and The Jockey Club were in talks with Cheltenham Town F.C. about a possible move to the racecourse. This would have meant the building of a new stadium with a double-sided stand, one side in the stadium and the other for watching the races. In 2011, Cheltenham Town F.C. decided against the move for financial reasons. In 2015, Cheltenham Racecourse opened the £45m 6,500-capacity Princess Royal Stand, which completed the redevelopment of the course.

Greenbelt Festival is a festival of arts, faith and justice held annually in England since 1974. Greenbelt has grown out of an evangelical Christian music festival with an audience of 1,500 young people into its current form, a more inclusive festival attended at its peak around 2010 by around 20,000, including Christians and those from other faiths.The festival regularly attracts the biggest names of Christian music and many mainstream musicians. Those that have played the festival in the past include both new and established musicians, mostly playing rock, folk and pop music. This list encompasses The Alarm, U2, Moby, Pussy Riot, Cliff Richard, Bruce Cockburn, Ed Sheeran, Martyn Joseph, Steve Taylor, Daniel Amos, Phatfish, Servant, Midnight Oil, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Over the Rhine, Iona, Amy Grant, Miles Cain, Lamb, Kevin Max, Lambchop, Goldie, Jamelia, After the Fire, Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill, Asian Dub Foundation, The Polyphonic Spree, Aqualung, Dum Dums, The Proclaimers, Daniel Bedingfield, Eden Burning, Duke Special, Why?, Athlete, Sixpence None the Richer, The Choir, Charlie Peacock and Delirious?. Greenbelt is also a venue for teaching and discussion about (but not exclusively within) the Christian faith, and has attracted number of Christian speakers, including Rowan Williams (the former archbishop of Canterbury) who is currently the festival's patron. However, the festival also welcomes anyone who the organisers believe 'speaks for justice', and has recently had Anita Roddick, Peter Tatchell, Bill Drummond, and Billy Bragg sharing their thoughts. More recently with its links to the NGO Christian Aid, Greenbelt has become heavily involved in campaigns for trade justice. The festival was one of the main catalysts for the huge Jubilee 2000 movement. Greenbelt is also a Christian showcase for performing arts, visual arts and alternative worship.

The Steeplechasing Hall of Fame is a museum at Prestbury Park, in the village of Prestbury, Gloucestershire. Opened in 1994 at Cheltenham Racecourse, the Hall of Fame charts steeplechasing history from 1819 and showcases the sport's riders and trainers associated with National Hunt racing.

Pittville School is a coeducational foundation secondary school located in the Pittville area of Cheltenham in the English county of Gloucestershire.The school occupies the buildings and grounds formerly occupied by Pate's Grammar School for Girls; the school was founded in 1986, when Pate's moved within Cheltenham as a result of a merger. As a foundation school, Pittville is administered by Gloucestershire County Council. The school also has a specialism in the performing arts.

Cheltenham Race Course railway station serves Cheltenham Racecourse on the outskirts of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. On the ex-Great Western Railway Cheltenham to Stratford line, the station opened in 1912 to serve the new racecourse at Prestbury Park, home of the famous Gold Cup meeting. The platforms were later extended to accommodate trains of up to 14 carriages. The station was only opened on race days and so facilities were rudimentary, but it continued to serve racegoers until the 1976 Cheltenham Festival. Although most of the stations on the line closed in 1960, the line itself remained open for non-stop passenger services until 1968. Special trains on racedays only served Cheltenham Racecourse station from 1971 until 1976. The line was also used as a diversionary route with no scheduled passenger services until 1976, when a freight train derailed at Winchcombe and damaged the track. The line was officially closed in the same year; the track was lifted shortly afterward. Cheltenham Race Course is now the southern terminus of the 12-mile-long heritage Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, run entirely by volunteers. The line has been reopened in stages. The line trackbed itself was bought in 1984. The track from Gotherington to the racecourse was relaid in 2001. The line was reopened as a heritage railway by the Princess Royal on 7 April 2003.The station is in a cutting fringed by Corsican pine trees. Its northern end, where it emerges from the cutting, affords views towards Cleeve Hill. The original station booking office is believed to be the only remaining example of a Swindon-built flatpack prefabricated building that was brought by train and assembled on site. It is perched at the top of the cutting, next to the A435 roadbridge and close to the main entrance of the racecourse. It has a collection of artefacts housed within it. A gentle slope gives access to the platform where there is a new station building with a canopy, toilets and waiting room. The station has two tracks, one adjacent to the platform and the other to allow locomotives to run around the train. A new signal box was opened in 2005 to control the signals and point work around the station.Access to the station by car is only via the main racecourse entrance. There is a large free car park. A bus service runs from the Network Rail Cheltenham Spa station, through the town centre to the Racecourse Park and Ride, about 10 minutes walk from the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway station.

The Pittville Pump Room was the last and largest of the spa buildings to be built in Cheltenham. The benefits of Cheltenham's mineral waters had been recognised since 1716, but not until after the arrival of Henry Skillicorne in 1738 did serious exploitation of their potential as an attraction begin. After the visit to Cheltenham in 1788 of King George III, the town became increasingly fashionable, and wells were opened up at several points round the town. Pittville, the vision of Joseph Pitt, was a planned 'new town' development of the 1820s, in which the centre-piece was (and remains) a pump-room where the waters of one of the more northerly wells could be taken. The Pump Room was built by the architect John Forbes between 1825 and 1830. It is a Grade I listed building standing at the northern end of Pittville Lawn with landscaped grounds running down to a lake. The building contains the original Pump, made of marble and scagliola, to which the waters are today fed by electric pumping. The building has a colonnade of Ionic columns; the interior houses a ballroom on its ground floor. Further Ionic columns support a gallery under a dome from which music might be played; on upper floors there were a billiard room, library and reading room. Above the colonnade are three statues, by Lucius Gahagen, erected in 1827, of the goddess Hygieia, Aesculapius and Hippocrates.The Pump Room and its grounds were managed during the 19th century by a succession of lessees, who offered the typical fare of pleasure gardens including menageries, exhibitions and balloon ascents. However the concession did not prove lucrative. Eventually Pitt himself went bankrupt and in 1890 the Room and the grounds passed into the ownership of the town council.They are now part of The Cheltenham Trust, a charity which also manages the Cheltenham Town Hall, the Wilson Art Gallery & Museum, the Prince of Wales Stadium and Leisure @ - plus the town's Tourist Information Centre which has continued to use them for public events. The Pump Room is frequently used as a concert hall, especially during the Cheltenham Music Festival. At one time the upper floor housed a Museum of Fashion. Following elections in 2007 the incoming Council discussed the possibility of selling the Pump Room but after widespread protests this proposal was later dropped in favour of a limited privatization which would retain the building's public use.

Whaddon Road, known as the Completely-Suzuki Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Cheltenham, England. It is the home ground of Cheltenham Town F.C. It has a total capacity of 7,066, with a mixture of seating and terracing. The ground's official name was the Victory Sports Ground until April 2009 when it was renamed the Abbey Business Stadium through a sponsorship deal. It was announced on 13 July 2015 that the club had agreed a three-year deal to rename the stadium The World of Smile Stadium, but the deal ended after only one year and the stadium was renamed LCI Rail Stadium in 2016–17, before being named "Jonny-Rocks Stadium" in 2018–19, and "Completely-Suzuki Stadium" in 2022.

Pittville is a residential suburb of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, founded in the early 19th century by Joseph Pitt. The population of Pittville Ward at the 2011 Census was 5,327. It contains Pittville Park, with its long gardens, two lakes, boat house, three cafes (including the boat house), tennis courts, menagerie, children's play area, 9-hole pitch and putt golf course, and one of Cheltenham's grandest and most celebrated buildings, the Pump Room. The upmarket tone of the area is set by the architecture: in addition to the Pump Room, Pittville contains some of the finest examples of Regency and Victorian housing in Cheltenham, including many of the town's largest houses. Schools in Pittville include Pittville School (the former Pate's Grammar School for Girls), and the private prep school Berkhampstead School. Gustav Holst's father, Adolph von Holst was organist at All Saints' Church, Pittville.

Whaddon is a suburb in the North Eastern part of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Whaddon consists of council housing built in the 1940s and 50s, making up Whaddon and Lynworth council estates. Whaddon is located less than a mile from Cheltenham town centre. Whaddon Road, the home of Cheltenham Town Football Club (currently playing in the EFL League One) is situated here.

Southam is a village in Gloucestershire, England, located on the outskirts of Cheltenham. Its main features are a castle, which has now been converted to a hotel, and the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, which runs through the outskirts of the village. It is primarily a residential community for workers in Cheltenham, and has a growing retired and working population, attracted by the scenic countryside. Though small in size, Southam has a thriving community. The village hall is used for coffee mornings, yoga sessions and the regularly occurring kids club among other things. The parish of Southam had a population of 1,175 according to the 2011 census.

Bishop's Cleeve Football Club is a semi-professional football club based in Bishop's Cleeve, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. They are currently members of the Southern League Division One South and play at Kayte Lane. Nicknamed 'The Mitres', the club are affiliated to the Gloucestershire County FA.