Kempston
General History
Victoria County History of Bedfordshire, 1908 (Extract)

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The village lies along the road leading from Bedford, and on the east side is a continuous line of buildings composed of the barracks and of small artisans' cottages which have sprung up within recent years and firm the district known as the New Town. Further south are the hamlets of Up End, where stands St. John's Church, a chapel of ease to the mother church, erected in 1868, and Bell End, where the urban parish ends. Between the road and the Midland railway lies a district which is gradually being built over. It is served by the church of St. Stephen, an iron building erected in 1888, and comprises Springfield House, which stands in grounds of about 30 acres, and is a private asylum for those suffering from mental disease, under the superintendence of Dr. Bower. The county school stands on the other side of the line and has its own chapel and large playing grounds.

Standing in beautifully wooded grounds opposite the county barracks and approached through an avenue of fine elms is the Grange, a modern building, the residence of Mr. James H. Howard. Two fields and some gravel pits divide this property from the schools and then come the almshouses, behind which is the manor-house, the seat of Mr A. A. Armstrong, which stands in a park stretching down to the Ouse. The house is a early 19th century stucco building, having a thin wooden cornice and slate roof. East of the manor-house are a few buildings of half-timber construction evidently of an earlier date than the house. Traces of a moat are still to be seen round the building. Close by, where the river divides in two and forms an island, are a large corn-mill and the gasworks, founded by Mr. F. Ransom in 1869, now managed by a company. The Bury, a modern building, the residence of Mr. Walter G. Harter, stands in an elevated position at the west end of the village just north of the road to Wootton. The house is approached from the road by a drive of large elms. To the south-east of the house are the remains of a high brick garden wall of a 17th-century building with two fine gate piers supporting well-carved stone eagles. To the north of the Bury are a few outhouses of older date than the present building, and beyond these, on the bank of the Ouse, stands the old church of All Saints with the vicarage and the schools. Crosseland Fosse and Moorland, the residences of Captain Beaumont and Mrs. Carpenter respectively, stand opposite each other 2 miles to the north-west of the village on the road to Turvey. Both are modern buildings.

The Hoo, a modern building situated in well-wooded grounds on a small hill west of the village and south of the Wootton road, is the residence of Mr. Thomas H. Barnard.

At Kempston Hardwick, which lies to the south-east of Kempston, is a moat, probably marking the site of the manor-house where the Snowes lived in the 16th century.

In Kempston there are several chapels, among which are Weslyans and Primitive Methodist chapels with a Bunyan Meeting House and a Temperance Hall.

The chief industry is the making of bricks and of drain-pipes, but pillow lace is also made to some extent by the old women of the village.

A remarkable cemetery of Anglo-Saxon date was discovered in 1863 near a gravel pit to the south of the Bedford road, and many Palaeolithic stone tools have been unearthed here. Pottery belonging to the Romano-.British period was discovered in 1890.

Extract from: Victoria County History of Bedfordshire, 1908

Page last updated: 30th January 2014