Why is there a Robert Burns Avenue in Cheltenham?

 

As the Blowings & Lashings of January continue to hurry themselves along tarmacadam streets and up and over the concrete ravines of the moribund metropolis, thoughts can be bleak. They can also wander lonely as clouds or trudge through muddy fields like the heavy boots of Ploughmen Poets!!

Or thoughts can, as in the case of the 

s T o N e d h O l y B l O g g E R - forever struggling to fill the yawning hours of idleness and distract myself from the ever present existential terror of simply being - become  mired in such burning topical issues as 'Why is there a Robert Burns Avenue in Cheltenham?   Looking tae fortify myself against both the Blasts O Winter and Philosophical Desolation, it is with a welcome sigh of relief that Ah get to use any excuse to reach for the whisky bottle and pull out the stopper...........So split that Warm & Reekin' Haggis open - it's Burns Night again!! When better to devote serious enquiry into the question just posited above!

Here at Stoned Holy HQ, it is our wont to forego all the 'Och aye, Jock McKay' and the 'Donald, Where's yir Troosers'   for a more down home doff o the Stoned Holy Bunnet when it comes to honouring the memory of Scotland's National Poet. We're pretty damn sure the Blessed Bard himself would appreciate this approach more than the Codified Pantomine played out in his name at the formal 'Burns Supper' and  its skirling of the pipes tae a large puddin' consisting o the heart, liver n lungs of a sheep packed intae the poor wee beastie's stomach as it makes it's way from the oven tae the table and then the groanin' trenchers of hungry chiels and coofs!!

It is also that time when we exhort all those within the Blogosphere to lift a glass to the Libertarian & Libertine Burns who we here assembled in Stoned Holy HQ salute as a Stoned Holy Roller of Yore!! We do so again, but briefly ; for this year, seeing as the
S T o N e d h o L y B L O g G e r  has spent a part of it promenading in his periwig doon the Regency boulevards of Cheltenham Spa in Gloucestershire, we thought  we'd shine a light on the little known connections between that particular toon and Burns and why there's a street named in his honour here, deep in the belly of the English beast some 250 miles over the Scottish Border.

Now, tae the best of my knowledge, Mr. R. Burns (late of Alloway, Ayrshire) tiptoed but once on English soil, briefly setting foot in England whilst on a tour of the Border country but he most definitely never tethered his Auld Grey Mare, Meg ootside any of the drinking emporiums of Cheltenham Spa, that's for sure. His sons however, William Nicol Burns & James Glencairn Burns (nae mare than snotty nosed bairns when their Auld Man breathed his last!), both retired tae Chelters after careers in the sub-continent with the East India Company (rising to the ranks o General and Lieutenant General respectively!). Fraternal bonds were obviously tight within the family for the brothers ended up seein oot their days living next door tae one another in 3 & 4 Berkley Street.

Willie died issue-less but Jimmy's loins were fertile.....though, it has to be noted, not as prodigously so as those of his poor, lamented Auld Yin!!).  His daughter Sarah (Burns' grand-daughter) emigrated tae Australia wi an Irishman, losing her 3 young children on the journey oot there. They were obviously made of sterner stuff in them days for her womb was fruitful once more in her new antipodean home. After the Irishman pegged it she returned tae her native shores with her youngest daughter Margaret in tow. Returning to take the spa waters and enjoy the refined promenading of Montpelier along with her sister Annie, the three ladies bided in with Uncle Willie in Berkley Street before decanting tae the urbane surroundings of
7 Pittville Lawn.  Sarah died in 1909, her daughter in 1917 and her sister in 1925. The three of them are buried together in St. Mary's Church, Charlton Kings. The S t O n e d h O L Y B l o g g e r went tae search for them.....and there they were ; nestled amongst auld sodgers whaed fought at Waterloo and the enterprising young men of Victorian Cheltenham who'd gone out tae India looking for careers within Empire but found nothing more than scarlet fever or malaria. Willie n Jimmy were more elusive however. Further online reading reveals they are interred in the 'Mausoleum' in Cheltenham but my inside sources are blowed if they know where this is!! Another time maybeez we'll track 'em doon.........

Well peoples, there yiz have it. The shortest peep at the connections between the Burns family and a toon in Gloucestershire....and why, the next time somebody asks you 'Why is there a Robert Burns Avenue in Cheltenham you'll be able to say 'pull up a pew n fire up a brew and Ah'll tell yi aw aboot it'!!......now, time for that whisky bottle ah mentioned earlier........

Here's tae Rob Burns and aw his issue and Old Long Since!!

& here's a wee linkie tae a photograph of Willie n Jimmy in all their stovepipe glory! 

Willie n Jimmy