Eggington

Eggington House is the manor house of the village of Eggington situated near Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England. The house is regarded as a very fine example of late 17th century domestic architecture, and is a Grade II* listed building. At the time of its construction in 1696 it was completely up to date and innovative in its design - which was unusual in the provinces, where architectural styles usually lagged behind that of the larger cities. This small mansion, built for a Huguenot from Montauban in France, a Merchant taylor John Renouille who became Sheriff of Bedfordshire. The house is of red brick. The main facade is of seven bays of classical sash windows and three storeys high. The roof line is concealed by a panelled parapet decorated with urns. The interior contains a staircase with twisted balusters. The house has had a varied ownership, the Renouille family anglicised their name to Reynal moved to nearby Hockliffe Grange and let Eggington. The last of the Reynal's predeceased his wife, who remarried which caused to the property to pass to her new husband named Francis Moore. By 1840 Eggington House belonged to a family called Adams. Later, circa 1900, it belonged to a family called Hodgson who frequently entertained the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. During World War I the house was requisitioned by the Army. From 1950 to 1976 it was the home of Sir Gilbert Inglefield, the 1967 Lord Mayor of London, and his wife. It was then the residence of Lord Slynn of Hadley and his wife. Today, the house remains in private ownership.

Stanbridge is a village and civil parish in Bedfordshire which lies 3 miles (5 km) east of Leighton Buzzard. It also borders the Bedfordshire villages of Hockliffe, Eggington, Tilsworth, Totternhoe and Billington. There was a windmill to the east of Mill Road, in the north of the village, that is marked on early Ordnance Survey maps. To the west of Mill Road, still standing, is a later windmill that has been converted to a three-story house. This has recently had a new dome fitted to its roof. St John the Baptist Parish Church is also located in the village. Stanbridge had its own railway station, until it was closed in the 1960s by Lord Beeching. This was to the south of the village, at Stanbridgeford on the Leighton Buzzard to Dunstable LNWR line. The eastern part of the old line has been utilised as a footpath to Sewell and Dunstable; the western part is now part of the Leighton Buzzard Southern Bypass. RAF Stanbridge was built on land that was in the neighbouring parish of Billington, but the town of Leighton Buzzard has now expanded over much of the base. The village has a traditional English country public house called The Five Bells. Stanbridge is part of the political ward of 'Heath and Reach' which sends a Councillor to Central Bedfordshire Council. The ward includes the villages of Heath and Reach, Hockliffe, Eggington, Stanbridge, Tilsworth, Tebworth, and Wingrave. The ward was created in 2011 and has since been represented by Councillor Mark Versallion.

Church of St John the Baptist is a Grade I listed church in Stanbridge, Bedfordshire, England. It became a listed building on 3 February 1967.

Clipstone is a small hamlet in Bedfordshire, England. It lies within the parish of Eggington that borders with Leighton Buzzard, Heath and Reach and Hockliffe. The hamlet may be small but it gives its name to the largest tributary to the River Ouzel, the Clipstone Brook. It has only a couple of farms and houses and lies on a back road leading off of the main A4012 road just outside the eastern end of Leighton Buzzard.

Stanbridgeford railway station on the London and North Western Railway's branch line to Dunstable served the Bedfordshire villages of Stanbridge, Totternhoe, Eaton Bray and Tilsworth from 1849 to 1964. Once popular with visitors to the nearby Totternhoe Knolls and ramblers, the station closed against a background of falling passenger numbers and declining freight returns. The station building has survived into private ownership, but a section of the alignment to the east and west of the site has been taken into the A505 Leighton Southern Bypass. National Cycle Network route 6 runs to the east over the bypass as far as the outskirts of Dunstable.

Tilsworth Castle refers to both "Warren Knoll Motte" and "Tilsworth Manor", both built in the same general area, located in the civil parish of Tilsworth, in the county of Bedfordshire, England.

Hockliffe is a village and civil parish in Bedfordshire on the crossroads of the A5 road which lies upon the course of the Roman road known as Watling Street and the A4012 and B5704 roads. It is about four miles east of Leighton Buzzard. Nearby places are Heath and Reach, Eggington, Stanbridge, Battlesden, Toddington, Tebworth and Tilsworth. Hockliffe is in Heath and Reach ward which sends a councillor to Central Bedfordshire Council. The ward includes the villages of Heath and Reach, Hockliffe, Eggington, Stanbridge, Tilsworth, Tebworth and Wingrave. The ward was created in 2011 and has since been represented by Councillor Mark Versallion.

Church of All Saints is a Grade I listed church in Tilsworth, Bedfordshire, England. It became a listed building on 3 February 1967.

RAF Stanbridge (originally RAF Leighton Buzzard) was a non-flying RAF station situated on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England and located 1.6 miles (2.6 km) west of the village of Stanbridge, Bedfordshire. For the majority of its life the station operated as a communications station. In its latter years it had a logistics and supply role. The station closed in 2013 and declared surplus to military requirements by the Ministry of Defence. The site was sold to property developers and all station buildings were demolished so it could be redeveloped for residential use.

Tilsworth is a small village and civil parish in Bedfordshire. It lies to the north west of Dunstable, and the Roman Watling Street (A5) forms the north east boundary of the parish of 1,200 acres (4.8 km2). The village lies on the gault clay, where springs well up just south of a gentle gravelly ridge. A large proportion of the area is still farmland. The Domesday Book calls the place "Pileworde" because of a misunderstanding of the symbol for "th", and the name probably means "Thyfel's homestead". A further alternative spelling is "Tyllesworth", in a legal record, dated 1470, mentioning Thomas Carter, a husbandman of the village.Stanbridge, a larger village, is a close neighbour to the west and some organisations, such as the Women's Institute, are combined.The medieval All Saints' Church, built of Totternhoe stone, stands in a prominent position on the hillside, and can be seen from a distance when floodlit at night. It has shared a vicar with Stanbridge since the 19th century, and the combined benefice now also includes Totternhoe. The Church House acts as a centre for many local organisations and there is an active community life in the village. The Methodist Church, faced with the need for expensive repairs, was closed in 1990 and demolished.Across the road from the church, on lower ground, is the ancient moated site of Tilsworth Manor (now a private house). The house itself has been much altered in modern times, but retains a picturesque 15th century gate tower. Tilsworth fête is held in the grounds each June. The manor was owned in the 16th century by the Fowler family. In 1600 a notorious trial followed a quarrel between Richard Fowler and his young wife. Richard was imprisoned in the Tower of London as the result of a forged letter implicating him in a plot to poison Queen Elizabeth I. His wife, her brother and her lover were convicted of the forgery.A gravestone in the churchyard, bearing a verse inscription about a "female unknown" found murdered in the nearby woods in 1821, arouses much interest.Several old farmhouses, two of them thatched, survive in Tilsworth. There are new houses and bungalows, but the village has not yet increased greatly in size. One farmhouse in the north corner of the parish was lost to Hockliffe, to which it was adjacent, in the 20th century. The "Little Chef" restaurant and Travelodge on the A5 are called "Hockliffe", though in fact they lie in Tilsworth. A public house, the Anchor, with restaurant and garden, stands next to one of the small greens, and there is a golf and conference centre. Tilsworth is part of the political ward of 'Heath and Reach' which sends a Councillor to Central Bedfordshire Council. The ward includes the villages of Heath and Reach, Hockliffe, Eggington, Stanbridge, Tilsworth, Tebworth and Wingrave. The ward was created in 2011 and has since been represented by Councillor Mark Versallion.

Billington is a civil parish in Bedfordshire about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Leighton Buzzard and not far from the Buckinghamshire border. There are two settlements: Little Billington (a hamlet in the west of the parish) and one that is now called Great Billington (straddling the A4146). At the 2021 census, the parish had a population of 359.The name of the parish is recorded in 1196 as Billendon, and may come from Anglo-Saxon language Billan dūn = "hill of a man named Billa". Another theorized original meaning is "hill with a sharp ridge". The spelling Billyngdon appears in a legal record, dated 1440, where Hugh and Thomas Billyngdon of Billyngdon, Beds, gentlemen, are mentioned.The village is known for its high density of Travellers, who outnumber the settled community. This community live in privately owned, but permitted, sites in the village, three in Little Billington and one between Billington and the nearby village of Stanbridge. The centre of Great Billington is Billington Hill, on top of which is the small parish church. The church was originally a small mediaeval chapel; however, in the late 1860s it was enlarged to a church, and a rectory built next to it to house the first incumbent. This was when Billington was first recorded as a parish in its own right. The bell turret of the church (it has no tower) came to the church secondhand, from the church at nearby Linslade, which was being enlarged at the time. The interior of the church is very simple; a small stained glass window in the west wall commemorates Edward Bradshaw, the first rector. The village once had a common, where the peasants cultivated their own strips of land; the name 'common' still survives as a field name. It was enclosed at the time of the enclosures, and is today part of a local farm. It is traversed by two public footpaths. The village contains some half-timbered thatched cottages, in the area around the summit of the hill, and also some old farmhouses and cottages. One of the thatched cottages on top of the hill has the dubious honour of having featured on countless chocolate boxes and biscuit tins. One of the more attractive houses in the village is Walkers Farm, a brick and timber house dating from the 16th century. Its once-thatched roof is now tiled. During the late 1870s and early 1880 large areas of the village were bought by Arthur Macnamara who built at this time the manor house, and transformed the village into a typical Victorian estate village. The village school, halfway up the hill, was built at this time. It closed in the 1950s. In the early 20th century a point-to-point course was built on the estate, people came from all over England to attend the race meeting held there. Edward VIII when Prince of Wales was a frequent competitor at the races. The races discontinued after World War II.

Nine Acres Pit is a 20.7-hectare (51-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Importance north-east of Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire. It was notified in 1986 under Section 28 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and the local planning authority is Central Bedfordshire Council. It is a Geological Conservation Review site.The site is a sand quarry which was worked by J. Arnold and Sons Limited in the late nineteenth century, and 9,516 tons were dug in 1897. According to Natural England: This locality shows a Lower Cretaceous section spanning the Aptian and Albian stages, including the finest development of Carstone and Shenley Limestone in the Leighton Buzzard area as well as superb exposures of dune bedding in the Upper Woburn Sands.The famous Shenley Limestone contains a unique fossil fauna of a diversity virtually unparalleled in the Albian elsewhere.It is a working quarry and there is no public access.