Patrick Comerford
In these warm, sunny days, I have taken some time off to walk around Luton and Dunstable in the warm sunshine and to explore the history and architectural legacy of these two neighbouring towns in south Bedfordshire.
I have been in Luton before, visiting some of the sites of the synagogues and some mosques and churches, but usually I am only passing through on my way to and from the airport, catching flights to Ireland or Greece. Until these weeks, I have only been through Dunstable on buses to or from the airport. So I took the opportunity earlier this week to visit Dunstable, to wander through its streets and to take time appreciating its older buildings and its history.
Dunstable, with a population of about 40,000, is the fourth largest town in Bedfordshire. The market town is east of the Chiltern Hills, about 30 km south-east of Milton Keynes, 8 km west of Luton and 50 km north of London.
Dunstable is on the route of the Icknield Way, said to be ‘the oldest road in Britain’, and the centre of the town marks the crossing point of Watling Street and the Icknield Way. There was a settlement there by the 40s and 50s CE, when the Romans arrived and paved Watling Street and the Icknield Way. The Romans knew the posting station as Durocobrivis or Durocobrivae and the name is found in the Antonine Itinerary, a register of the stations and distances along roads across the Roman Empire.
The oldest part of the town is where the Icknield Way and Watling Street cross each other, and these two roads continue to divide the into four quadrants that have each been developed in stages.
Several explanations are offered for the meaning of the modern name of Dunstable, relating it to a thief called Dun, to an Anglo-Saxon name meaning a boundary post, or to words that refer to market place on a hill.
The area was occupied by the Saxons ca 571 CE, and Dunstable may have been founded in the sixth to eighth centuries, and the layout of the town may date from Anglo-Saxon times. What became Bedfordshire was part of the Kingdom of Mercia, and Dunstable and the surrounding area suffered from later Norse raids under King Sweyn Forkbeard and King Cnut of Denmark.
Henry I started to clear the woodlands and built a royal residence or hunting lodge, Kingsbury, in 1123 at what is now the Old Palace Lodge Hotel on Church Street. He also founded Dunstable Priory in 1131. Dunstable was one of 12 places where an Eleanor Cross marked the funeral entourage of Eleanor of Castile in 1290, when her coffin stayed overnight in the priory before moving on to St Albans and to Westminster Abbey.
During the English Civil War, Roundhead troops were stationed in Dunstable, the town was plundered by Charles I’s soldiers 1644, and the soldiers of Fairfax destroyed the Eleanor Cross.
Later, the town prospered with a large number of coaching inns. It was only one or two days’ ride on horse from London and was a suitable place to rest overnight. Two pubs in Dunstable still have coaching gates: the Old Sugar Loaf Inn on High Street North, and the Saracen’s Head on High Street South. However, the importance of Dunstable as a significant market town diminished as neighbouring Luton grew.
Dunstable had been an ancient borough from the 12th to 16th centuries, but lost its borough status after the Reformation. Dunstable became a borough again in 1864 but the municipal borough was abolished in 1974, becoming part of South Bedfordshire, and then of Central Bedfordshire.
Dunstable grew in the 20th century as an engineering centre. Shops were concentrated along High Street North and High Street South, the old Watling Street, the Quadrant Shopping Centre opened in 1966, and the Eleanor’s Cross retail area, was developed in 1985 to cater for smaller shops.
The Luton Dunstable Busway, linking Dunstable with Luton and Luton Airport, was completed in 2013. Much of the busway runs along the lines of an old railway that has been converted into a guided busway.
The cultural centres in Dunstable include the Grove Theatre and the Little Theatre, and the town’s facilities include Central Bedfordshire College, several parks and open spaces and the Priory House Heritage Centre.
The Icknield Way Path passes through the town on a 110-mile journey from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire to Knettishall Heath in Suffolk. The Icknield Way Trail, a route for walkers, horse riders and off-road cyclists also passes through the town.
I wanted to spend time in Dunstable Priory and to see some of the other churches sites in the town, to explore some of its history – including the priory grounds, the site the Eleanor Cross and the site of Henry VIII’s annulment from Catherine Aragon – and to see some of the many listed buildings there too.
The building known today as Priory House is the oldest extant building in Dunstable, aside from the parish church, and is nationally rare for its surviving 13th century vaulted ground floor undercroft. It stands close to the anciient crossroads at the heart of the town, opposite the market place on the south side of the High Street, and close to the mediaeval monastic precinct.
Donna Maria, an Italian restaurant at 26 Church Street, is a timber-framed building that dates from the 17th century or earlier, with an 18th century brick frontage and an early 19th century pair of shopfronts, and jettied at the side facing Little Alley. Signs at the door claim it is both a ‘15th century timber framed building’ and a ‘16th century building’ that was saved from demolition by a successful campaign.
No 13 High Street North incorporates the Anchor Gateway, an early 17th century gatehouse with an interesting design. At the ground floor level is a round-arched carriageway with Roman Doric half columns and entablature; the first floor has two three-light stone mullion casements, and the gable above has brick coping and a central stone tablet; and on each side of the archway there are pointed arched niches.
The Anchor Gateway in High Street North was the original entrance to the former White Horse Inn, where Henry VIII once stayed in 1537 having refused to stay at the Priory. It eventually became the Anchor Inn. According to local lore, the king played a game of bowls on the green behind the inn, near the site of Christ Church today.
Marshe Almshouses at 97 to 107 Church Street is a traditional almshouse almost 300 years old, dating from 1743. It is worth noticing the six sash windows and six ‘dummy’ windows in pairs, the three coupled doorways, and the central projection with a pediment and tympanum that includes a circular panel with a coat-of-arms and the inscription ‘This lodge was built & endowd [sic] in 1743 pusuant [sic] to the will of Mrs Blandina Marshe’.
The Old Sugar Loaf Inn is a 350-year-old coaching inn at 46 High Street North, dating from 1660 and with an early 19th century Roman Doric porch over the pavement. It seems to have been called the Grocers Arms in the late 17th century and used a sugar loaf cone as its sign, so that it was known as the Sugar Loaf in 1688. Jane Cart, a rich heiress, bought the premises in 1717 and renovated the building.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert stopped to change horses at the inn on 26 July 1841 when they were on a four-hour journey from Windsor to visit Woburn Abbey as guests of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford. In its heyday, was the most prestigious inn in Dunstable, catering to the nobility and but discouraging visits by less-distinguished people who came to the town in stagecoaches. Today, it is popular with local rugby supporters. The inn’s eye-catching sign – a gigantic conical sugar loaf – is no longer seen on top of the portico.
The Old Post Office at 67 High Street North was designed by the architect Noel Ackroyd Rew (1881–1959) and was built in 1912. He designed several Edwardian-era post offices in the region, and All Saints’ Church, Berkhamsted (1905) and Berkhamsted School Chapel.
The Clock Tower and Market Cross in the Square on the west side High Street South was built in 1999 as a Millennium project.
I had started the day with the surprise and pleasure of an authentic Greek coffee at the Greek Bakers in 36a High Street North, close to the Quadrant Shopping Centre, and ended the day slowly sipping a glass of white wine looking out on the walled gardens at the Old Palace Lodge Hotel, across from Dunstable Priory on Church Street.
I had seen so much and heard so much and there is a lot to talk about, including stories about Dunstable Priory, Saint Mary’s Church, designed by Desmond Williams, and some other churches in Dunstable, as well as stories of royal hunts and haunts, royal funerals, marriages and annulments and the fate of the town’s Eleanor Cross.
And there are stories too of two Jewish communities in Dunstable: the mediaeval Jews who were forced into mass conversions, and the war-time Jewish community that struggled to keep Jewish life going into Dunstable into the 1950s.
But more about these stories from Dunstable in the days to come, hopefully.
