Cheltenham Circle
The Cheltenham Circle (also known as the Cheltenham Group and the Cheltenham Science Fiction Circle) began in 1955 and ended in 1963 -- the 25th issue of Vector noted its expiration. It organized the 1961 Eastercon and is perhaps best known as the organization that originated the Knights of St. Fantony. Prominent members were Eric Jones, Bob Richardson, Norman Shorrock, and Peter Mabey.
Geoff Winterman, a member from the 1950s, provided a nice short memoir of the club in the late 50s.
Clubroom[edit]
The Circle had clubrooms on the London Road just outside the town center. Geoff Winterman remembers:
I’m not sure how I came to be walking up London Road that dark, wet autumn evening, but I suddenly glimpsed, up a weed strewn path leading to a decrepit Georgian terraced house, a flickering coloured illuminated sign: “Cheltenham Science Fiction Circle” ... I cautiously followed the path to the flickering signed, then down some steps and though a door and into a basement room stacked high with hundreds of books – SF Books! I was in an Aladdin’s Cave of Science Fiction. Later to learn that this was the BSFA Library....Through the library into the club room with that amazing wall smothered in graffiti and signatures of the then great and good of British Science Fiction and Fandom. The toilet tucked away behind a door in the corner that if you glanced up you were confronted with a booted foot seemingly coming down from the floor above!
| Club | 1955—1963 |
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