Patrick Comerford
We have all heard of bringing coal to Newcastle, an English idiom dating back to at least the 1660s. Similar sayings include selling snow to the Eskimos, or, in Greek, ‘taking owls to Athens’ (γλαῦκ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας). If you’ve heard of these, you have also pondered the futility of selling sand to the Sahara. But Leighton Buzzard has a sizeable sand quarrying industry, and the good enough quality building sand is exported to Egypt.
In recent days, I have been discussing some churches in Leighton Buzzard and Linslade, two neighbouring towns in south-west Bedfordshire, including All Saints’ Church, Leighton Buzzard, and Saint Barnabas Church, Linslade, and in the days to come I hope to look at Friends’ Meeting House on North Street, one of the oldest Quaker meeting houses in England.
Leighton Buzzard, between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton and Milton Keynes, is a market town on the banks of the River Ouzel and the Grand Union Canal and close to the Chiltern Hills. It is only 58 km (36 miles) from Central London and I pass through it regularly on the train between Milton Keynes and Euston. Indeed, many of my generation still recall that the Great Train Robbery in 1963 took place near Leighton Buzzard.
But this was my first time to walk around the streets of Leighton Buzzard and Linslade, to visit some of its churches and to explore the High Street, the alleyways and the mews and with an eclectic mix of historic buildings and monuments.
The Grand Junction Canal opened in 1800. It skirted the west edge of the town, but lay just over the parish and county boundary marked by the River Ouzel, and was in the neighbouring parish of Linslade in Buckinghamshire.
The London and Birmingham Railway was built in the 1830s and passed just over half a mile west of the centre of Leighton Buzzard. Leighton railway station opened in 1838. Although the station was named after Leighton Buzzard, it was actually a mile south of the village of Linslade, in open countryside. New streets were laid out and houses built between the station and the canal in an area known initially as Chelsea.
Linslade has long been effectively a part of Leighton Buzzard but it was not until 1965 that it was transferred from Buckinghamshire to Bedfordshire, and the two urban districts were merged. Leighton-Linslade Town Council is based at the White House on Hockliffe Street and the town, which has a population of 43,203, is expanding to the south and to the east.
It is not clear when Leighton Buzzard first grew up and developed, but some historians suggest there was a settlement in the area from as early as the year 571, and there are many theories about the origins of the town’s name.
The Leighton part of the name come from Old English Lēah-tūn, meaning a ‘farm in a clearing in the woods’. One version of the addition of ‘Buzzard’ says it was added by the Dean of Lincoln in the 12th century from Beau-desert. Another suggestion is that because there were two places called ‘Leighton’ in the Diocese of Lincoln, the dean added the name of the local Prebendary of Leighton, Theobald de Busar, and so over the years the town became Leighton Buzzard.
Leighton Buzzard developed and expanded in the 19th century with the arrival of road, canal and rail links. But the town had been a market town for centuries and its first market charter was granted in 1086.
The Market Cross is a prominent landmark at the heart of the town and for centuries it has been a focus for public events. It is said to date from the 15th century and to have been donated by Alice Chaucer (1404-1475), Duchess of Suffolk and a granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
A crowd gathered at the Market Cross in 1750 to denounce Jane Massey and Catherine Hawkes as witches, even though witchcraft laws had been repealed 16 years earlier. The crowd planned to drag the women to Luton to ‘float’ them in the river – the river at Leighton Buzzard was not deep enough. But several local men intervened and the mob was dispersed.
The Market Cross stands on a five-sided base and rises to a height of 27 ft. The lower storey rests on five buttresses, and the cornice has gargoyles and grotesques.
Above are five statues: facing down the High Street is the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child; to her right is a bishop and Saint John the Baptist with the Lamb of God; to her left is a crowned king and the Risen Christ.
By 1650, the cross was ‘in a ruinous state that it greatly endangered the lives of those persons who were passing near it.’ A tax was levied on the residents to pay for its repair, but 200 years later the Market Cross was once again in need of repair in 1852.
The restoration included the addition of a stone parapet, new steps and an iron palisade. The statues were replaced with new ones, and the old figures were placed around the Town Hall.
The Market Cross needed further restoration in 1900. The old figures were placed back on the cross replacing the newer figures that had decayed badly. A new parapet with pinnacles and new steps were added.
The old Town Hall on the Market Square stands on the site of the Market Toll House, a timbered building with open arcades at ground floor level, a bell tower and a clock.
A new town hall was built in 1851. The market traders used the open ground floor while the upper storey was the town gall and was also used by the county court. The open arches on the ground floor were bricked up in the early 20th century to form a ground floor room.
The town council bought the market rights and the town hall from the lord of the manor, J Trueman Mills, for £1,200 in 1918, with the condition that it would be retained by the town council for ever for the use of the town. The building was used as a fire station from 1919 to 1963 and is now a Pizza Express restaurant.
The former Cross Keys Inn on Middle Row stands on an island site at 35 Market Square, facing the High Street and the Market Cross. This is the site of the chapter house of the Fraternity or Guild of Corpus Christi, founded by Alice Chaucer as lady of the manor in 1473. The guild had two guardians and brothers and sisters from the parish and they supported a chaplain who said daily Mass in All Saints’ Church.
The guild was abolished in 1547 with the dissolution of monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation and the Brotherhood House was leased to Christopher Hoddesdon.
When the Cross Keys burned down in 1899, it was rebuilt on a much larger scale, twice the size of the old inn. It has been described as modified Carolean in style and is a Grade II listed building. The Cross Keys closed in 1988, later became Lloyds TSB Bank. Lloyds closed in Leighton Buzzard last November, and the building is vacant once again.
In all, more than 70 buildings on the High Street are listed, including some of the town’s prominent bank buildings.
The former Barclays Bank on High Street dates back to 1812 when the Leighton Buzzard Bank was founded by five of the town’s Quakers: Peter Bassett, John Grant, William Exton, Joseph Sharples and John Dollin Bassett. The bank later traded as Bassett, Grant & Co, then as Bassett & Grant, Bassett Grant & Bassett and then Bassett Grant Bassett & Co. By 1854, it was Bassett Son & Harris.
The bank was rebuilt in 1866, and was designed by the Gothic revival architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905), whose parents were also Quakers. He is best known for his designs for Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. His other works include Eaton Hall in Cheshire, designed for the Duke of Westminster, the Hall in Balliol College, Oxford, and other college buildings in Cambridge and Oxford, the former Foster’s Bank on Sidney Street, Cambridge, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors on Great George Street, Westminster.
Bassett’s Bank amalgamated with Barclays and other banks owned by Quaker families in 1896 forming Barclays & Company. The Bassett family interests in the bank continued well into the 20th century. The Leighton Buzzard branch closed in October 18, 2023
The NatWest bank on High Street was built later in the 19th century in the style of an Italian palazzo and is an example of Neo-Renaissance architecture. It is a three-storey stucco building with ground floor round arches, five sash windows, segmental arches on the upper floors and sash windows.
The bank is expected to close its doors in October 2025.
The Swan Hotel dominates the north half of the High Street and the building dates from the early 19th century. But there has been a Swan in Leighton Buzzard since 1600 or earlier, when it was owned by the Carvell and Osmond families. Today, it is owned by Wetherspoons.
The Peacock Inn was reputedly the oldest inn in Leighton Buzzard. It was listed as Grade II in 1954, when the architect thought it was a 16th or early 17th century building. It is a timber-framed building with a steeply pitched old tile roof with a gable, plaster infilling and some early 19th century brickwork to the front. A more detailed inspection in 1979 found the building is much older and probably dates to the early 15th century, making it the earliest secular building in the town.
The name of the Peacock Inn first appears in documents in the late 17th century, when it was owned in 1690 by the Peacock family. It closed in 1979 and was converted to a shop in the newly named Peacock Mews.
At the other end of High Street, the Golden Bell on Church Square opened as an inn in 1603. But it claims to stand on the site of a 13th-century thatched lodging house used by stonemasons who were building All Saints’ Church.
Beside it, the Post Office was Leighton Buzzard’s first purpose built-school, and was the gift of Lady Mary Leigh in 1790, when two endowed schools, the Joshua Pulford School and the Leigh Charity School, were amalgamated came to be known as Pulford’s.
The school moved to Parson’s Close in 1884, and the building became the Post Office. But the Post Office too has closed in recent months.
At the other end of the town, Wilkes Almshouses on North Street date back to 1630. The original almshouses were built for ten poor widows by Edward Wilkes in memory of his father John Wilkes. The almshouses were rebuilt in 1857 and then extended in 1873.
Edward’s son, Matthew Wilkes, bequeathed funds in his will for an annual commemoration to take place on Rogation Monday at the almshouses, and this ceremony continues every year. All Saints’ Church is the starting point for the annual Wilkes Walk, described as ‘a curious procession of the church choir, clergy, and churchwardens across town to the almshouses in North Street.’
When the choir and the trustees of the Wilkes Charity reach the almshouses, an extract of Wilkes will is read out as a member of the choir stands on their head … a spectacle I must return to see.
