In 1935 Reeves found his preferred purchaser, selling the house, gardens and some 40 acres of land east of the Lilley Brook, with 2000 yards of walled frontage to the Cirencester and Moorend Roads (with restrictive covenants against re-sale for small buildings) to the Irish Community of the Blessed Union of the Sacred Hearts. This came about after Mother Marie Therese, the Superior General of La Saint Union Sisters viewed several large properties in Cheltenham as potential sites for a new Catholic Grammar School, before agreeing to the purchase of about half of Charlton Park. The mansion needed extensive renovation and additional buildings before it was suitable for use as a school. By 1939 the work was completed and on 8 September that year a Benedictine monk from St Gregory's Church celebrated the first mass for the Community and scholars of Charlton Park Convent, a new day and boarding school for girls. Before leaving Cheltenham, Mother Marie Therese donated land for a parish church and buildings, together with a substantial sum of money for that purpose. On the outbreak of World War Two the plans were put on hold and during the war students from La Saint Union training college in Southampton were billeted here in the 'new' convent school.

 

After the war the building of the separate parish church commenced and Father John O'Donnell was appointed parish priest, tasked with overseeing the building work and related fundraising, living in the convent during the church's construction. From its early days the new convent school had been the centre of parish life, with masses, parish meetings, reflection groups and fundraising events held in the school hall. On 30 June 1957, the new church on Moorend Road was blessed by Bishop Joseph Rudderham, attended by 30 priests and a large congregation. Mother Marie Therese returned from Belgium for the occasion, proud to see the people of Charlton Kings now had their own catholic church. In 1987 the Carmelites, Benedictines and La Saint Union left the parish for pastures new, and their departure, sad in many ways, was recognized with a Mass of Thanksgiving and Farewell. The service included a reading from Ecclesiastes, from which the following lines are equally fitting for other events in this historic parkland,

 

 

The Convent's statue of Christ that stands in St Edward's School grounds.

 

Hugh Reeves would no doubt have been satisfied with scriptural sentiment of this kind as he reflected on the meaning of life and how things had turned out for his old house and its additional school buildings on the east side of Lilley Brook. As a lawyer and the last private owner he sought to do all that was humanly possible to ensure the protection and preservation of the mansion, the beautiful trees, lawns, walled garden, parkland and its future development. He would have obtained further peace-of-mind in learning that the house had been granted statutory protection after it was added to the 'List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest' by new legislation enacted in 1950, just two years before his death.

 

The transition from Convent School to St Edward's, another Catholic based school, 35 years after his death would also have met the exacting requirements he laid down to protect things on both sides of the Lilley Brook. On the west side in the 1930s he recovered some of his earlier outlay after selling a strip on the S.W. edge for an exclusive residential development, subject to him approving the plans and imposing his characteristically strict building standards and covenants, decreeing that after his death any right of enforcement be assigned to Cheltenham College. Fifteen good class houses were progressively built on 15 generous plots along both sides of this new road, addressed as Charlton Park Gate, (with no known Post Office resistance) the name coming from the Old Bath Road Turnpike. It was said to have been an intended route connecting Old Bath Road and Moorend Road - something else that we know did not happen.

 

At about the same time another residential road, The Avenue, penetrated the edge of Charlton Park on the far side of Claypits Path, opposite Withyholt Farm on Moorend Road (one house in 1935, rising to ten by 1940 and about forty today) following an old avenue of sycamores (visible on maps of 1806 and 1865) laid out by a neighbouring landowner in the 18^th century. It was one of several avenues of trees offering vistas from the mansion and from Withyholt. From the mid-eighteenth century such avenues went out of fashion, being thought of as too straight and unnatural.

 

Throughout the next forty years (1935-1975) the remaining 26 acres of open parkland west of the Lilley Brook remained much as before - attractive tree filled parkland on the edge of the town, used by College boys as a pleasance [sic] including golf practice and scouting - with a scout hut erected on the land. The only other known income the College appears to have derived from this otherwise fallow area of grassland amounted to a modest £120pa from a local farmer for continued cattle grazing and watering rights.

 

Reeves' generosity ensured he was remembered as Cheltenham College's greatest benefactor. He bought other land, including 2½ acres on the River Severn, opposite the Lower Lode at Tewkesbury for the College's new boathouse and iron railings used there were taken from Charlton Park. The park had now provided Cheltenham College with additional playing fields just a few hundred yards from its main buildings and boarding houses and virtually unimpeded access to some of the finest open woodland in the area. It enjoyed excellent views of Cleeve Hill and Leckhampton Hill, said to have been better than those from the college itself, and as you are about to discover, this triggered another sequence of events that came perilously close to destroying the skyline of the whole town, in a way Reeves could never have envisioned or countenanced. He had however sowed the seeds for future development within Charlton Park, subject to his exacting requirements for housing development through exclusivity type building and sale costs and his legendary covenants, much as he did for Charlton Park Gate during his lifetime.

 

Between 1952 and 1960 it appears Cheltenham College did not voice any significant change of use in relation to the additional twenty-six acres of parkland and it was some time after Reeves' death in 1952 that things began to change. On his death the benefit of the covenants transferred to the College. This meant the College now held the land in Charlton Park whilst unencumbered by the covenants formerly applying to it, though still able to enforce them against various people and bodies Reeves had sold his land to.