About

Bedford is boring and John Bunyan aside nothing ever happened here.

Wrong.

We’ve had a secret spy school, a mass invasion almost overnight, and a plush property portfolio bought for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

In 1883 a quarter of Bedfordshire belonged to just two men, His Grace Francis Charles Hastings Russell KG, 9^th Duke of Bedford and the brewing baron, Samuel C Whitbread.

More changed in the next seventy years than in the previous 700.

This site will look primarily at that time, telling the remarkable stories of those who helped shape it.