Our easy-to-use website contains details and locations of places to visit around this area. Please select from:

	Places to Stay: Bed and Breakfast Hotels and Guest Houses Pubs with Accommodation Self Catering
	Places to Eat and Drink: Cafes, Coffee & Tea Shops Pubs serving Food Restaurants and Bistros
	Places of Interest: Places to Visit
	Gardens Centres: Garden Centres/Nurseries
	Specialist Shops: Antiques & Restoration Arts and Crafts Fashions Gifts Home and Garden Jewellery Food and Drink Shops

Bedford

This lively cosmopolitan town owes its origins and development to the River Great Ouse, which remains one of the most important and attractive features of the town. Bedford was already a thriving market place before the Norman Conquest, and a market is still held on Wednesday and Saturday each week. There’s also a farmer’s market once a month and, in the summer months, a gourmet and speciality food market on Thursdays, and a flower and garden market on Fridays.

The town’s oldest visible structure is Castle Mound, all that remains of a fortress built here shortly after the Battle of Hastings but destroyed in 1224. A timber-framed building has been constructed on top of the mound, which commands a spectacular view over the River Great Ouse.

The Church of St Peter de Merton, Saxon in origin, boasts a fine Norman south doorway that was not actually intended for this building but was brought here from the Church of St Peter in Dunstable. St Peter’s is not Bedford’s main church: that is St Paul’s Church in the centre of St Paul’s Square, a mainly 14th and 15th-century building, with some interesting monuments and brasses, and a stone pulpit from which John Wesley preached in 1758. Outside the church is a statue of one of the best-known sons of Bedford, John Howard, an 18th-century nonconformist landowner who denounced the appalling conditions in jails and prison ships. His name lives on in the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Bedford’s most famous son, John Bunyan, was born just south of the town, in Elstow, but lived – and was twice imprisoned – in Bedford in the 1660s and 1670s. The son of
a tinsmith, Bunyan followed the same trade as his father and so was able to travel the countryside more than most people of that time. In the 1650s, Bunyan met John Gifford, the then pastor of the Independent Congregation, which held its meetings at
St John’s Church. It was their lengthy discussions that led to Bunyan’s conversion and he was baptised shortly afterwards by Gifford in a backwater that leads off the Great Ouse. In 1660, Bunyan was arrested for preaching without a licence. He was to spend 12 years in jail, time he put to good use by writing Grace Abounding, his spiritual autobiography. But it was during a second imprisonment, in 1676, that he began writing his most famous work, The Pilgrim’s Progress. This inspired allegory of the way to salvation still entrances even non-believers with the beauty and simplicity of its language. Following his release from prison in 1672, Bunyan was elected pastor of the Independent Congregation.

The Bunyan Meeting Free Church was constructed in 1849 on the site of the converted barn where Bunyan used to preach. The magnificent bronze doors, with illustrations from The Pilgrim’s Progress, were given to the church by the Duke of Bedford in 1676. Adjacent to the church is the Bunyan Museum, which graphically tells the story of the man as well as the times through which he lived. Among the many displays are the jug in which his daughter Mary brought him soup while in prison, his chair, his tinker’s anvil, and the violin and flute that he made in prison. Call: 01767 627666.

Another tribute to Bunyan is Bunyan’s Statue, which was presented to the town in 1874 by the Duke of Bedford. Made of bronze, the statue is the work of Sir JE Boehm; around the pedestal of the nine-foot figure, which weighs more than three tons, are three bronze panels depicting scenes from The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Beside the river and running through the heart of the town are the Bedford Embankment Gardens, which provide a year-round display of plants. Close by is the Priory Country Park, an area of 206 acres with a diverse habitat, which represents the flood meadows, reed beds and woodland that once surrounded the town. In Park Road North, Hill Rise Wildlife Area is a site for nature conservation specialising in butterflies, amphibians and small mammals.

For an insight into the history of the town and surrounding area, the Bedford Museum is well worth a visit. Among the many interesting displays is a piece of wall that shows the construction of the wattle walls that were an essential building technique in the 14th century.

Housed within the unlikely combination of a Victorian mansion and an adjoining modern gallery, the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (see panel below) was started in 1949 by a wealthy Bedford brewery family. Its treasures include an internationally renowned collection of watercolours, prints, and drawings, as well as some fine glass, ceramics and furniture. The permanent display includes works by Turner, Gainsborough, Picasso and Matisse, and a needle panel entitled Bunyan’s Dream. This was designed by Edward Bawden in 1977 to commemorate the tercentenary of the publication of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the 350th anniversary of John Bunyan’s birth and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The gallery contains a major archive of Bawden, notably his linocuts and lithographs. Other contemporary work can be seen at the RCA Gallery, which showcases the visual arts, including film, photography and animation.

A building with more modern connections is the Corn Exchange in St Paul’s Square, from where Colonel Glenn Miller frequently broadcast during the Second World War. A bust of the bandleader who gave the world In the Mood and Moonlight Serenade stands outside the Exchange, and in 1994 a plaque was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of his mysterious disappearance over the English Channel, after setting off in foggy weather in a single-engined Noorduyn ‘Norseman’ C-64 aircraft. East of Bedford, Clapham Twinwood Control Tower is the last place where Miller was seen alive. A small museum is open at weekends and Bank Holidays in the summer, and the Glenn Miller Festival of swing, jazz and jive is held annually on August Bank Holiday.