Ampthill, Market Place c1955 (ref. A158028) | This view looks south down
Dunstable Street from
Market Place; the Moot Hall
is on the right with its
slender iron-glazed
casements. Its ground
storey is now a surveyor
and estate agents, no longer
a newsagent and
tobacconist. The three-
storey building with painted
architraved frames to the
rows of sash windows is the
early 18th-century White
Hart, and beyond is a
pedimented neo-Georgian
1930s Barclays Bank.
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Ampthill, Woburn Street c1955 (ref. A158032) | Woburn Street enters Market
Place from the west and has
more vernacular houses and
cottages along each side.
Sandhill House, on the far left,
is an attractive earlier 19th-
century house in villa style with
bracketed eaves and a shallow
slate roof. On the right is the
sign for the Queen's Head pub,
the queen being Henry VIII's
first wife, Catherine of Aragon,
who lived in Ampthill during her
divorce in the early 1530s.
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Ampthill, Market Place c1960 (ref. A158070) | Heading south-east through winding
country lanes, our short tour
reaches Ampthill. The Market Place
is dominated by the Moot Hall,
rebuilt by the Bedford Estate in
1852 in Jacobethan style with the
re-used clock cupola from the 18th-
century predecessor bursting from
the roof in a bizarre out-of-scale
way. To the right is the water pump
obelisk erected in 1756 by the Earl
of Upper Ossory (an Irish title), who
also demolished buildings that had
encroached into the market place.
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Ampthill, St Andrew's Church c1955 (ref. A158039) | Going east from Market
Place along Church Street,
we reach the small square
with the brown stone
church on its north side, a
curiously villagey one for a
town. On the left is the
cliff-like Dynevor House,
with 1725 on the rainwater
hopper-heads, three
storeys of box sashes and
a corniced parapet. No 36a
on the right is late
Georgian, while the Feoffee
almshouses are late 16th-
century timber-framed
under the render. | Add your own Memory
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Bedford, St Paul's Church 1898 (ref. 40861) | St Paul's Square became very
much the civic centre of the
town with the Floral Hall, the
Corn Exchange, the Town
Hall, the Shire Hall and
County Offices looking out
onto the church in its central
churchyard. This view is from
the south-west by the Town
Hall; we can see from the
west front, seen on the left,
that the nave and aisles are
the same height, a style
known as a hall church, and
the interior is in consequence
light and airy.
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Bedford, St Paul's Square c1955 (ref. B51020) | St Paul's Square, also known
as Market Place, is bounded
on the west by the
churchyard of St Paul. The
old guild hall and numerous
small market encroachment
buildings were cleared away
early in the 19th century by
the town's Improvement
Commissioners; this in effect
recreated the original scale of
the medieval market place. In
this view, the market place is
mostly a car park, with market
stalls along the south side of
the Square - one is visible at
the left.
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Bedford, High Street 1929 (ref. 81740) | At the top of the High Street, the photographer looks south. The Lime Street/Lurke Street junction is beyond the
Swan Hotel's handcart. The Midland Bank with its Ionic half-columns was demolished in the 1970s; the
replacement building is now a pub called The Banker's Draft. Barclays lies beyond, also in the stone-faced dignified
classical dress beloved of 1920s bankers. Most of the High Street buildings survive, but without the splendid
Victorian and Edwardian shopfronts. The Bear, modernised about 1900, also remains, its glazed tiles now painted.
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Bedford, St Peter's Church 1897 (ref. 39941) | St Peter de Merton is of great interest, for it contains Anglo-Saxon work. The present chancel was the nave of the
first church, while the tower was added after the Norman Conquest. Much of the rest of the church, the present
nave and aisles to the left, are later medieval with heavy Victorian restoration. The round-arched doorway to be
seen on the left was re-erected here in the 1560s; it was salvaged from the demolished church of St Peter
Dunstable on Cauldwell Street south of the river.
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Bedford, the Park, Putnoe c1960 (ref. B51092) | Beyond the route suggested in this chapter, which finishes at Bedford Park, the 1950s and 1960s expansion of
Bedford to the east was well planned with parks, shopping parades and schools - many of the schools are highly
regarded in architectural circles. The population of the town doubled between 1911 and 1981. The fields of
Putnoe Farm were developed in the 1950s: here we look north-west from the shopping parade towards Braeside
across Bowhill and the park, here in its infancy but now well treed and attractive.
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Bedford, the Harpur Schools 1897 (ref. 39933) | In the far distance is the old
Harpur School, now the Town
Hall. It was supplemented by this
fine Tudor-style battlemented
building when the Harpur Trust
built the Modern School, or the
Harpur Schools, in the 1830s;
the building was designed by the
renowned local architect John
Wing, whose son was a pupil, but
was completed by John Blore. No
longer a school, it was preserved
as a frontage to a shopping
centre. The railings have long
gone, but two of the ornate cast-
iron lamp-posts survive in what is
now a pedestrianised street.
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Bedford, the Grammar School 1898 (ref. 40859) | In 1898 the school buildings
were still crisp and new; they
show well the Gothic Revival
style chosen by Robins - this
style was favoured by schools
in Victorian times. The north
front, seen here, is the best
elevation, with its central turret
flanked by Gothic traceried
windows and battlements.
Above is a louvred turret with
a spirelet. The only post-
medieval feature is the
Georgian dormers in the steep
roof. The school is an
undoubted success, and a
great asset to the town.
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Bedford, Grammar School 1897 (ref. 39935) | Our look at the fine schools of Bedford
moves north beyond St Peter's Square
to Bedford School. This had its origins
in the free school founded by Sir
William Harpur in 1566. The Harpur
Trust, following the decay of its school
in the 18th century, made ample
amends in the 19th with the Harpur
Schools in the 1830s; then after 1873
it had three further schools built. Here
we see the south front of the grammar
school; it is now Bedford School, and
from the start took boarders as well as
day boys.
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Bedford, Girls' School 1897 (ref. 39934) | Now Bedford High School for
Girls, this fine building originally
housed both the High School
and the girls' Modern School.
Opened in 1882, it was
designed by the leading
architect Basil Champneys in a
Jacobethan style, with numerous
shaped gables and mullioned
and transomed windows. The
Modern School moved out in
1892. This east front faces the
high walls surrounding Bedford
Prison on the other side of
Adelaide Square, which is itself
a collection of fine buildings,
some of 1801 by Bedford's
own John Wing.
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Bedford, Infirmary 1897 (ref. 39937) | The old Infirmary, designed by
John Wing and opened in 1803,
fronted Ampthill Road; it was
later expanded to be the
Bedford General Hospital
(South Site). Founded with a
bequest from Samuel
Whitbread, it had fifty beds -
and a budget of £50 a year for
leeches. In 1899, two years
after this view was taken, it was
replaced by fiery red brick and
terra cotta buildings; its site is
now occupied by an uninspiring
Accident and Emergency
building opened in 1964. It is a
sad loss to the architectural
heritage of the town.
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Bedford, the school sports field 1921 (ref. 70431) | The grammar school moved out
of its old buildings (now the
Town Hall) to a new twenty-acre
site set in fields north of St
Peter's church in 1891. In this
view we look south past cricket
games towards the main
. To their
left a science block was added
in 1933; there is a chapel
further to the left, designed in
1909 by Bodley. To the right are
the back garden walls of the
villas in De Parys Avenue.
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Bedford, County Schools 1897 (ref. 39936) | South-west of the town centre,
along the Ampthill Road, on a
large site between it and the
railway line, the County Schools
were built in the 1880s on a
grand plan with a massive tower
and, to the left, a fine chapel.
Long demolished, its site is now
occupied by Technology House,
a rather good 1960s building,
long and well-proportioned and
in generous grounds, the
remnants of the school site. | Add your own Memory
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Bedford, the Town Bridge 1921 (ref. 70434) | The present bridge was designed by the local architect John Wing. Its foundation stone was laid by the Marquess
of Tavistock, the eldest son of the Duke of Bedford, in 1811. The costs proved high. By the time the bridge
opened in November 1813, it was done without ceremony: the local MP, Samuel Whitbread, merely walked across
to meet the Commissioners and shake hands. A further plaque records that it was opened free of tolls in 1835 -
the debt by then had been paid off.
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Bedford, the River Ouse 1929 (ref. 81733) | Another glimpse of the
Swan Hotel's neo-classical
portico can be seen through
the leaves on the left. The
views of the river from the
principal bedrooms of the
hotel were described by the
diarist John Byng in the late
1790s as being highly
agreeable with 'the
smoothness of the wide
water, the skipping of the
fish, and the sight of a party
of elegant female rowers'.
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Bedford, The Promenade 1897 (ref. 39947) | In this view, looking north-
west from the bridge on the
south bank of the Ouse, the
Swan Hotel is seen without
ivy. The pediment on the left
is that of the main west
elevation facing the town:
the graceful columned
portico can be glimpsed
through the trees. It was
from this court, formed by
the demolition of the old
Swan Inn, that coaches left
for London and other towns
until the mid 1850s.
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Bedford, the River Ouse c1955 (ref. B51015) | The riverside willows on
the north bank have only
recently been pollarded
in this view, in which an
eight rows past. The
opposite bank is Long
Island. The small landing
stage on the right was
built here to close off
the boat slide, which is
just behind it. | Add your own Memory
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