Birthplace of Gustav Holst

We had a lovely weekend with Rich and Lisa and managed to get out and about and show them Cheltenham. We visited Gustav Holst’s birthplace museum. This is the Victorian house where he spent the first few years of his life. There is lots of information about his life on the ground floor and then the house has been furnished to reflect life in Victorian times.

The room pictured is on the first floor and is furnished in the style of the 1830s, before the Holst family lived here, and gives an idea of the type of room (in another part of Cheltenham) where Gustav Holst’s grandfather Gustavus Valentine von Holst would have given piano, harp or singing lessons to Cheltenham’s young ladies.

The painting above the mantelpiece is by Theodor von Holst, Holst's great-uncle, the brother of his grandfather. He was the first illustrator of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. What a creative family!

The house has been beautifully furnished to reflect the period and lots of appropriate knick-knacks around the place, I always enjoy that attention to detail in a museum.