history of dunstable

Mia and connie TEAM!

DUNSTABLE IN THE 16th CENTURY AND 17th CENTURY

In 1533 Archbishop Cramner announced the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon in the Priory church. Henry VIII closed the priory in 1539. Local people helped themselves to stone for building. However the closure of the priory led to the decline of Dunstable. In the Middle Ages many pilgrims came to the priory and spent money in the town. Those visitors were now gone.

Moreover like all Tudor towns Dunstable suffered from outbreaks of plague. There was a severe outbreak in 1582.

The wool cloth industry declined in the 17th century in the face of competition from the north of England. However some new industries grew up in Dunstable. One was lark catching. Another was making straw hats. Yet another industry was brewing. There was also a lace making industry in Dunstable. Yet in the 18th century Dunstable remained a small and unimportant market town and the population hardly grew at all.

DUNSTABLE IN THE 18th CENTURY

In the 18th century Dunstable was quite prosperous but it was very small. In 1801, at the time of the first census it still only had a population of 1,296. It was hardly larger than it was in the Middle Ages. Despite its small size Dunstable was an important stage coaching town. There had always been people travelling in private coaches but now you could pay to travel in a stagecoach. From 1742 stagecoaches made regular stops in the town and travellers stayed in the inns.

Meanwhile lace making and straw hat making boomed in Dunstable boomed.

In 1712 William Chew died. He left money in his will to build a school for 40 poor boys. It opened in 1715 but closed in 1905. Also in 1715 Frances Ashton built almshouses (she gave her name to Ashton Square). In 1723 Jane Cart, a wealthy widow built the Cart almshouses. Furthermore Church Street was built in 1784

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DUNSTABLE IN THE 19th CENTURY

In the early 19th century straw hat making boomed in Dunstable but later in the century it declined. However at the end of the 19th century new industries arrived such as printing and engineering. The railway reached Dunstable in 1848 and from then on the town grew rapidly (although it was still small at the end of the century). In 1901 Dunstable only had a population of 5,157. Houghton (which was still a separate community) had a population of 2,608.

In the mid-19th century new streets were built on the west of the town such as Matthew Street, Albion Street, Edward Street and Icknield Street (named after the Icknield Way, a track which had existed since prehistoric times).

From 1836 there was a gas supply in Dunstable. If you could afford it you could have gas light in your home. From 1865 the streets were lit by gas. In 1855 Dunstable gained its first newspaper. In the 1870s the town gained a piped water supply and in 1897-1902 sewers were built. A cemetery was laid out in 1861. Then in 1864 Dunstable was made a borough. A police force was formed in 1865. The first telephone exchange opened in 1897.

We also went to Dunstable library and looked up some local history.