The Ghost of the Stroud Observatory

William Cowle was born in 1820 on a farm in South Gloucestershire. He started out by helping his father sell his crops. By the time he was thirty, he’d found his way to the busy market town of Stroud, a good three hours’ ride north by horse.

He was an entrepreneur at heart, and once in Stroud, he set up his own grocery business. He quickly became an important member of the local business community.

But William had his eyes fixed on loftier matters. By the time he was forty, he was also a property developer: he sold his existing shop and stores, renovated a pub, and used the proceeds to build a small development on the High Street. The cluster of several ventures (including a brand new grocery) earned him a decent amount of money.

William was now a very well-connected member of the flourishing middle classes of Stroud. When an entire hillside of sixty acres came up for auction a few years later, he was in a position to snap it up immediately, and as a successful business man, there was no need for him to carry out the development himself. He simply carved up the fields with some well-surfaced new roads, chopped it up into individual plots, and sold the plots on individually to local "builders, capitalists, and speculators of every class".

The brand new Victorian housing estate that was taking shape wasn’t popular with everyone:

…the spoiler in the shape of the builder of a whole town of small houses and shops, has been there ... Its bosky banks and sheltering trees have been cut down, to widen and straighten the roads through it, and with them have disappeared the choice places where children gathered wild flowers and collected the pretty spiral snail shells that lurked in the grass.

While William’s fortunes were rising, the fortunes of the working class people of Stroud were sinking. Their valuable skills in the local woollen industry were being slowly displaced with machinery. The poorest areas of Stroud, immediately next to William’s housing estate, became slums. Some streets were ankle-deep in sewage, and cholera epidemics came in waves through the area.

William was well aware of the consequences of this poverty: for most of his life in Stroud he was a member of the Stroud Board of Health, and spent a lot of time and money trying to install safe water supplies and modern sewage systems, particularly in that part of town. He also gave a large plot of his new estate for the building of a new hospital. 

By the time he was sixty, he was a very rich man.

William was born in the same year as the Astronomical Society of London, and lived during a time when astronomy was transitioning from an amateur hobby to a profession. All over Gloucestershire, rich people were building small observatories.

William loved astronomy, and saw the wonder of the heavens as proof of the divine. At a meeting of the local Natural History Society in 1879, he stood up and declared that astronomy "exalts the mind and lifts us up above the mere quibbles of political and theological controversy". 

He then moved onto his big announcement, which had been thinking about for some time: he said he hoped that “some day when Stroud is ready for it, and a good situation could be found to place a telescope, to give an instrument myself, and it should be a good one”. His audience (of dedicated astronomy fans) cheered loudly.

Within 10 months of that meeting, he'd built an entire observatory, and installed a 6 inch telescope. Observatories like this were serious undertakings: they were equipped with a hand-cranked rotating dome; a mechanical clock drive that slowly moved the telescope in time with the rotation of the heavens; and a built-in reclining seat that would also automatically creep around, following under the telescope.

He genuinely believed this would elevate the minds and lift the spirits of everyone in Stroud, that it would “encourage a fondness for astronomy amongst our neighbours, and provide an instrument that some could not afford and others would not spend the money upon”.

The Observatory was 2 minutes walk from the town’s worst slums, and 10 minutes from the workhouse.

The Observatory was well-known in the local area. Local newspapers described people using it during the Great Comet of 1881, and the full lunar eclipse of 1884. 

Ironically, the only other time we know the people of Stroud did flock to the observatory, it wasn't actually to see a celestial object. A kite with a Chinese lantern attached to its tail had floated up from the cemetery one summer evening in 1886:

...people began to stare and wonder … curiosity prompted some folks to visit the observatory … and level the glass on the strange phenomenon. From Bowbridge, too, came people anxious to find out what mysterious astronomical body had taken up its abode so near to Stroud.

But although it did see some use, it was hard to keep an enterprise like this going over a long period of time. When William first opened the Observatory, he pointed out that “there are many valuable parts connected with the instrument that are easily removed or damaged". It was worth about £65,000 in today’s money.

William’s original plan was to open it, under supervision, for up to three hours every evening, and charge a small fee, so that "some person [could] be put in charge, and be responsible for any loss or damage” . He asked the local Natural History society to make these arrangements, but they never did, and he was forced to make these arrangements himself. It's not clear if he ever did charge a fee, which would certainly have excluded the telescope from its poorest neighbours.

And although the Observatory was well known, the number of high-profile astronomical events (or possible UFOs) to keep the crowds flowing was always going to be limited. Ten years after it had opened, the Stroud News noted:

Stroud is fortunate in possessing an observatory which is accessible to students, and the neglect of which is not very creditable to the town.

They said that the current guardian, Mr Gill, was “endeavouring to popularise the science" in the hope that it …be put to increased use."

Four years later, the Stroud News was still pleading (presumably on behalf of William) that:

we would advise our readers to take advantage of the beautiful starlight nights with which we are now being favoured to visit Stroud Observatory

William died aged 78. Right until his death, he was still trying to keep the observatory open, still passionate about its ability to exalt the mind. 

In his will, William left £1,000 (£165,000 in today’s money) to cover the cost of maintenance of the Observatory, and offered the building and its contents to the Council. But telescope needed repairs, and £165,000 wouldn't keep it open for long, so the council decided it “would be better left in the hands of the Trustees”. 

So, what did happen to the sad, neglected Observatory at the end of its relatively short life? There's photo of it still standing in 1915, but it seems very unlikely the Trustees kept it open.

It seems to have been demolished by the time the land was conveyed to the hospital in 1931. Maybe it was stripped for parts, and the money reinvested in the museum that William's trustees also set up. A descendent of the Trust still exists today, with the official name of the Stroud District (Cowle) Museum Trust. There are no records stating exactly what happened to the 6 inch telescope, and I would love to know where it might be today.

On the plot itself, all that’s left is a patch of bushes, and an iron gate with a handle that you can still grasp:

Photos reproduced with thanks to Marion Hearfield, John Stevens, and the Museum in the Park

Field Estate auction poster CC-BY-NC courtesy of Tony Macer

Specific images and accession numbers from the collections of Museum in the Park, Stroud:

• Photograph of William Cowle CM.3501/5
• Stroud Hospital and Trinity Church letterhead, 1879. 1957.144/1
• Photographic postcard of The Hospital, Stroud. 2007.183/211
• Printed flyer ‘Stroud Observatory’ from William Cowle’s scrapbook, 1955.91
• Business card, from William Cowle’s scrapbook, 1955.91