Houghton Regis - History

History

Houghton Regis is considerably older than Dunstable, and it is mentioned in the Domesday Book when it was called Houstone. At the time of the Domesday Survey a great part of what is now Dunstable was included in Houghton parish. When Henry I founded Dunstable he gave in compensation to the men of Houghton a wood called Buckwood. At that time it paid in tax the large amount of three pounds by weight and twenty shillings of blanch silver (to the King) and one ounce of gold for the Sheriff. Timeline for Houghton Regis.

The men of Houghton claimed to be exempt from tolls in Dunstable market. The inhabitants of Houghton Regis were for long employed in straw-plaiting. In 1689 they and those of neighbouring villages petitioned against the Bill that made it compulsory to wear woollen hats, pointing out that the straw-plaiters would be ruined and that the farmers also would suffer, as they now obtained good prices for their straw, and English wool not being suitable for the making of hats, they would not be in any way compensated.

Bordered by the Chiltern Hills, the town was once a small village that had its character changed when it was earmarked for a massive "London overspill" estate in the 1950s and 60s. The only remains of the areas around the small village centre are names such as Tithe Farm Road. An indication of the planners' attempts to make the London migrants feel at home is the naming of the local estate roads after London landmarks; Chelsea Gardens is an example. The town lacks identity due to being dwarfed by its much larger neighbours.

Remnants of the town's past are still apparent with, for example, the fifteenth century Parish Church of All Saints (formerly St Michaels) with an excellent example of a Norman tower and the former Squire's residence of Houghton Hall, built in the eighteenth century.

Between the town centre and Dunstable there is the Townsend Industrial Estate, built on the former farm of the same name.

Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, many of the high street shops were demolished along with a church to make way for industrial units, many of which have since been demolished themselves. The main shop in town was the Wavy Line store, which has since been used as a motorbike and car showroom.

A fish & chip shop was sited at the entrance to what is now the access road into the Co-op; the current fish and chip shop was a splendid toy shop in the 1960s boasting a working model railway in the window. The toy shop formerly being approximately on the site of the current low cost supermarket and adjacent to a now demolished church (in front of the existing graveyard) and opposite a hardware shop and woodstore.