Nobody at Cheltenham Town could be bothered to reply to the letters I sent them but as luck would have it, at the time their badge was made from the town’s coat of arms and I can easily trace that myself. The latest badge is so much easier to decipher we don’t need to be a veteran of Bletchley Park to work this one out. (PIC 1) Shaped like a shield the club colours make up the halves of the shield. A bird looking like it is about to land is in the shield and it has a red breast. This clue along with the clubs nickname tells me it’s a robin. The club’s name at the base of the shield is there to help anyone not as smart as we are.
As far as I can make out this club kicked off in 1887 and were nicknamed “The Rubies” because of their red shirts. The club, as we know, is now known as “The Robins”. Cheltenham plays at Whaddon Road which is now not the name of the ground just the postal address. Due to sponsorship deals, it is now known at least for this season as the LCI Rail Stadium. Another season and another name so presently the ground is known as the rather colourful Jonny-Rocks Stadium and it holds 7,066, which is probably more than they need if the same secretary in charge of notifying people that they have a game on is the same one who got my letters. If I sound bitter it’s because I am disabled and all the money for stamped and addressed envelopes to the 92-plus clubs came out of my Universal Credit or the Paupers Pittance, as it is known. I needed a project while getting over a major leg operation. While some clubs went out of their way others just went out.
As I mentioned before on this site clubs change their badge’s for financial gain. As well as selling more merchandise which they can’t do using the coat of arms, due to the fact they are presented to the city and the people in them so can’t be copyrighted. Modern-looking easy, to print and cheap to reproduce logos can be copyrighted. So, years of proud history are replaced by a cheap-looking logo that probably cost millions, to have a top designer’s four-year-old child work for minutes, with a black and red crayon on the living room wallpaper to come up with, and it may take many years for smaller clubs that do this to recoup the millions they pay some longhaired geek in a cardigan, armed with a felt tip pen to come up with a simple design to replace their football badge with a business logo.
Cheltenham’s old proud piece of history that until recently adorned the shirts was the coat of arms of the city which were granted in 1877. (PIC 2) The books in the shield represent Cheltenham as a centre of learning as a result of the Ladies College and the College for Boys now known as Cheltenham College. The cross is that of Edward the Confessor, who once owned the land that is now Cheltenham. A flock of birds, believed to be pigeons, feeding at a local spring helped to discover the healing qualities of the water that Cheltenham later became well known for, the birds flocking constantly in and around the water drew people’s attention to it. This is symbolized by the two birds and the blue background at the top of the shield. The oak tree stands for Cheltenham’s position as a top garden town. Cheltenham had an early role as a market town serving the local area with Cotswold Sheep which were bought and sold there. The crest again alludes to the waters with the bird and blue wavy lines and acorns from which oaks grow a symbol of Cheltenham’s history and again the garden connection. The motto “SALUBRITAS ET ERUDITIO” translates as, Through Health and Learning. Two factors that contributed to the development of the town are the waters and colleges.
The name Cheltenham was first recorded in 803, as Celtan hom. From the anglo-Saxon word, cilta meaning, steep hill and hom meaning possibly a water meadow, which makes sense as water runs off a hill, and the River Chelt runs through the town. Cheltenham seems to be the Billy no mates of the league as I can’t even find any local rivals willing to admit they even exist although this could be down to the secret secretary in the invisible department of who knows where! To find out more on this elusive club of redbreasts fly over and land at www.ctfc.com
