Montpellier Rotunda (Lloyds Bank) Montpellier Rotunda And Pump Room

Montpellier Rotunda and Pump Room, Montpellier Street, Cheltenham

This Grade I listed building comprises a pump room with reading room and billiard room (now a banking hall) combined with a celebrated rotunda. The earliest structure, a wooden pump room, opened in 1809 under Henry Thomson and was rebuilt in stone in 1817, with the long room and colonnade on the south-east probably designed by the architect Underwood. The rotunda was added in 1825-26, designed by J.B. Papworth.

The building is constructed of limestone ashlar with a copper roof. The exterior features a Doric colonnade with slender shafts on raised plinths, attic bases and capitals with echinus profiles, and a parapet decorated with a lion couchant. The circular rotunda is roofed with a coffered wooden dome internally and covered externally with copper following the hemispherical shape of the interior. Its proportions closely resemble the Pantheon in Rome, measuring 56 feet high and 54 feet across, with all light entering through a central lantern. The rear facade has 4 and 3 windows arranged asymmetrically, fitted with 1/1 sash windows, and an off-centre entrance with panelled double doors with sidelights in a pilastered surround.

The principal interior feature is the central single-storey circular domed assembly room. Around the lower stage are pairs of Doric pilasters to recesses with a frieze of alternating square and oblong panels and entablature, between taller pairs of Corinthian pilasters with panels surmounted by a continuous dentil entablature with egg-and-dart moulding. The coffered dome contains a central circular skylight with a central rose and ornate frieze. There are three original entrances with part-glazed doors with margin-lights and sidelights with overlights, all curved on section, plus two further openings inserted in the 20th century.

Papworth came to Cheltenham around 1824 and was retained by Henry Thomson and his son Pearson Thomson to design various properties in the area. All furnishings in the rotunda were originally by Papworth but are now lost, as are murals of hunting and country scenes that once lined the corridors. Water was pumped from 80 surrounding wells from 6 in the morning.

Banking premises were established in the building around 1882 when the Worcester City and County Bank had an agency in one corner. This was subsequently taken over by the Capital and Counties Bank, which merged with Lloyds in the early 20th century. The building has hosted notable cultural events, including performances by Jenny Lind in 1848 and the first performances of Gustav Holst's Scherzo and Intermezzo in 1891.