Why unassuming Bedfordshire is the best county in Britain
Every county in Britain is full of beauty, history and character, but having visited them all while researching my I Never Knew That… series of books, there is one that never fails to surprise and delight with its unassuming charms and unexpected treasures. Bedfordshire will always be my favourite.
Bedfordshire has something for everyone. For families there is Woburn Abbey, Britain’s largest safari park, and Whipsnade Zoo, Britain’s biggest, where over 200 species of endangered animals and birds roam freely in spacious outdoor enclosures. The zoo is sheltered by Dunstable Down, which at 797 feet is the highest point in the east of England, not to mention home to the London Gliding Club and a mecca for kites and hang gliders.
For those interested in other forms of aviation, the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, near Biggleswade, boasts one of the finest collections of vintage aircraft in the world, while little Cardington is home to the vast Cardington sheds from where the ill-fated R101 airship took off for India on October 4 1930. The largest vessel ever built at the time, the R101 crashed into a field in Northern France early the next morning, killing 48 of the 54 on board. The victims are all buried together in a special churchyard at Cardington, while in St Mary’s church across the road lies Samuel Whitbread, founder of what became for a time the largest brewery in the world. Born in Cardington in 1720, he was the first man to speak out in Parliament against slavery.
Then there is the wartime control tower at RAF Twinwood, north of Bedford, which has been made into a museum celebrating band leader Glenn Miller, who took off from the airfield on December 15 1944 and was never seen again.
Talking of musicians, if you visit the Oakley Arms in the middle of Harrold, a pleasant village beside the Ouse, north-west of Bedford, the locals will tell you of the evening in June 1968 when Paul McCartney dropped in and gave his first-ever live performance of Hey Jude. Having taken a detour off the motorway to find somewhere for his old English sheepdog, Martha, to swim, Paul ended up in the Oakley Arms, where he proceeded to give an impromptu performance of his hits at the pub piano.
For church lovers there is St Mary’s in Stevington and St Thomas in Clapham, with their Saxon towers built for refuge from Danes marauding across the Ouse, then the boundary between Saxon and Dane. St Mary’s in Felmersham has an exquisite 13th-century early-English west front that is worthy of a cathedral, whilst Dunstable Priory is one of the finest Norman buildings in Britain.
Dunstable is known as the birthplace of English theatre thanks to the natural terrace where the church now stands being used to stage the country’s first play. The production was put on in the early 12th century by a Norman monk called Geoffrey de Gorham, who set up a school at Dunstable and wrote a play about St Catherine for his students to perform.
The seeds of the English Reformation were also sown at Dunstable, for it was in the priory that Catherine of Aragon was put on trial and her marriage to Henry VIII pronounced illegal by Archbishop Cranmer.
As Dunstable can claim the English theatre so can the tiny village of Elstow, two miles south of Bedford, claim to be the birthplace of English literature. It was here that in 1628 John Bunyan, author of the first English novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was born. The beautiful 15th-century Moot Hall that served as Bunyan’s school room still stands at the centre of the village green and is now a museum in his memory.
But if there is one place that exemplifies the allure of Bedfordshire, it is tiny Cockayne Hatley in the east of the county. Here stands a simple church on a small hill at the gates of a barely-glimpsed manor house. From outside the church is nothing special, but the door opens onto a spectacular interior, a feast of medieval woodwork, carvings and stained glass imported from the Continent by a 19th-century rector – the finest interior of any country church in Britain. And there’s more.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed
– From Invictus, by William Henley
Beneath an ash tree in the small overgrown churchyard stands the simple grey gravestone of William Henley, whose poem “Invictus” provided the inspiration for Prince Harry’s Invictus Games. Henley, larger than life with a great bushy beard and a peg leg, was the model for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver from Treasure Island.
Henley’s daughter Margaret lies in the same grave. Known as the “golden child” for her golden hair and golden laugh, she adored her father’s great friend, the playwright J M Barrie, and would leap into his arms lisping ‘Fwendy, Fwendy’ – and so did Peter Pan’s Wendy come by her name. Margaret died aged five, but remains immortalised.
Two of the world’s best-loved characters and an unrivalled country church lying undiscovered at the end of a quiet country lane. That’s the magic of Bedfordshire.
