Close wished my daughters taught dancing, I reminded her of her marriage vow.’ Mr. Close’s energies took visible and permanent shape in the buildings which arose during his long incumbency. Eight churches grew up around the parish church, but that, alas! was not their model. Most of the new ones displayed all the worst features of a debased style of church architecture: a diminutive chancel, three-decker arrangements for parson and clerk, high pews, with safe doors for the congregation. National schools were built, and training colleges founded, also under the direction of Mr. Close, and he took his share in the institution of the Proprietary College for Boys, in 1843. With the new churches came new clergy, among whom, the most popular name at the time, was that of Archibald Boyd, vicar of Christchurch, a very eloquent preacher who brought the little schoolroom in the hamlet of Alstone, where he lectured on Sunday evenings, into rivalry with the parish church. To-day, he is famous for having had as his curate, for five years, the young Frederick Robertson, whose afternoon sermons at Christchurch, in spite of the suspicion of unorthodoxy which early began to attach itself to his name, drew many thoughtful hearers, such as the Principal of Cheltenham College. The most leading mind at the time among the younger clergy was that of Charles Henry Bromby, who became vicar of St. Paul’s in 1843. He was a man of large mental gifts, and had special perception of the intellectual needs of his day. The Working Men’s Club, which he established in his parish, was among the very first in the country. All the great educational institutions of Cheltenham are indebted to his outlook and zeal. Joint-founder of Cheltenham College, and later, though he took no public part and earned no name in the matter, of that for ‘Young Ladies and Children,’ his most active interest and work was for the teaching of the poor. He became first Principal of the Training Colleges[34] for headmasters and mistresses of national schools, starting the work on wise and secure lines, and rapidly bringing it to the front among that of kindred institutions. Mr. Bellairs was actively as well as zealously associated with Mr. Bromby in all the great schemes, by which Cheltenham, rich and poor, was to be enlightened, and in the case of the Proprietary College for Ladies, it is his name which comes to the front, and it was in his house that the first meeting to draw up its constitution was held.