Clophill

Sandy was originally a modest Roman settlement on the Roman road between St Albans and Godmanchester; in the 18th century the town became important for its coaching inns servicing the Great North Road. However, it is a somewhat bitty town, and the market square is a distinct disappointment. Here, a little further north up High Street, we look west along Bedford Road. The late 19th-century town hall is on the left. By 1925 it was the Astor Cinema, and is now the Roundabout Club, for there is now a roundabout roughly where the photographer is standing.
An extract from from"Bedford Photographic Memories".

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.
An extract from from"Bedford Photographic Memories".

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.
An extract from from"Bedford Photographic Memories".

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’.
An extract from from"Bedford Photographic Memories".

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.
An extract from from"Bedford Photographic Memories".