Elstow

John Bunyan was born near Elstow, and made his adult home in the village. The Moot Hall shown in the photograph dates back to the 17th century, and was undoubtedly used by Bunyan for religious meetings. The guilty appearance of the boys suggests that they too enjoy the mildly hooligan pastimes that caused Bunyan so much angst in later life.
An extract from from"Bedfordshire Photographic Memories".

As should be expected of the founder of a religious concept, John Bunyan’s home and the village in which it stands have almost become a place of pilgrimage. His tribulations and his works, of which ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ might be the best known but is far from singular, are celebrated in the establishment of the Bunyan Trail. This 75-mile-long footpath winds through the Bedfordshire countryside linking elements of Pilgrim’s journeys and the more factual aspects of Bunyan’s life.
An extract from from"Bedfordshire Photographic Memories".

The wooden plaque above the door of the cottage on the right proclaims it as John Bunyan’s home. The village is not a great deal larger than is indicated in the picture. The majority of the buildings are in whole or part 17th-century in origin.
An extract from from"Bedfordshire Photographic Memories".

FEW PEOPLE would be shocked by the idea of a national poll, conducted by Idler magazine, discovering that Luton was Britain’s ‘crappiest town’. Luton stands out, according to the study, because it is incredibly ugly and has a sense of neglected isolation. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what is neglected isolation? Clearly there is some kind of insinuation that Luton is not cool, it’s not with the latest trends in ‘Cool Britannia.’ Leaders of popular culture have a stupefying arrogance, loathing any sort of individuality; they are able to dish out criticism, but not to take it. Luton is about people, whatever the buildings look like. One must admit that modern towns are unbearably look-alike, but none look like Luton. Maybe it is this uniqueness that critics cannot stand. That is not to say there are not problems here, but these are challenging times across the globe. No place is really isolated. As for neglected, that is not Luton’s fault. Like so much of the south-east, the government wants to pack the people in, but it does not want to pay the price in infrastructure. The meaning of isolation in the town’s distant past is easier to understand. Communications were slow, and neglect was not an issue. Folk just got on with the business of survival. Hunter gatherers (evidence for their presence is Worthington Smith’s discovery of Palaeolithic flint tools in the 19th century) made their home 250,000 years ago beside hillside lakes. Neolithic, or New Stone Age, men arrived from France and the Rhine, crossing the nascent channel on rafts. They brought cattle, seed corn and pottery. (Robert Cook) We are looking across Luton in its Chiltern setting from the Eaton Farm location, which became the airport.
An extract from from"Luton - A History & Celebration".

William brought with him 5,000 knights, the new aristocracy. When he died the country was still 90% Saxon; the Normans’ policy, like the Romans’, was ‘divide and rule’, with the majority of England’s two million people subject to the Norman fist. His successor, Henry II, gave the manor of Luton to his illegitimate son Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and a new church was built south of the present St Mary’s. Henry also gave land to the monks to build a hospital and chapel on Farley Hill. Another hospital, the House of God of the Virgin Mary, was founded by Thomas Beckett on a hill between the old Vauxhall car factory and Luton Airport.
An extract from from"Luton - A History & Celebration".