Timeline of Events in Flitwick
1086: In the Domesday Book the manor of Flitwick has 10 households, 7 ploughlands. 2 lord's plough teams. 3 men's plough teams. It also had. Meadow, Woodland, 100 pigs, 1 mill. Priestley was separate and had a total of 6 households, ploughland, meadow, woodland and 60 pigs.
1210: David Rufus became Lord of the Manor. The Rufus family retained the manor for 150 years. The Civic and Community building is known as the Rufus Centre.
12th - 14th Century: Flitwick Church constructed. A Norman doorway survives from late 12th century. The church was enlarged in the early 14th century when the chancel was rebuilt and a south aisle added. The west tower was built in about 1380.
1660: Baptist Chapel founded.
1783: The Brooke family inherited The Manor Estate and live there until 1934.
1788: Murder committed in Flitwick Wood. James Cooke, baker of Steppingley murdered Ampthill woman Elizabeth White, the following year Cooke was hanged for his crime.
1806: Flitwick Enclosure Act passed, enabling all the open fields to be enclosed and form compact farms or smallholdings.
1830: Agricultural Riot, low wages of farm workers and unemployment led to discontent and in December some 100 labourers created a disturbance lasting two hours before the ringleaders were arrested. The leader, William Mitchell, received 6 months hard labour.
1836: Parish workhouse sold.
1843: Smock Mill built.
1852: The National School opened.
1858: The Church of St. Peter & St. Paul was restored and enlarged by well known Victorian architect William Butterfield.
1870: Flitwick Station opened 2nd May; the coming of the railway split the village in two.
1872: School taken over by School Board.
1873: Methodist Chapel opened on Thursday 26th November.
1874: The Crown Public House was badly damaged by fire on 5th November and the premises looted by a drunken mob.
1880: 270 Roman coins dated about 270 A. D. discovered at Priestley Farm.
1880s: Henry King Stevens bottles and sells water from a spring on Flitwick Moor. His venture is a success and his mineral water featured in The Lancet in 1891. In 1898 Henry Stevens died and the land and water rights were sold to R White & Co. The Flitwick Chalybeate Company was formed and, until the demand faded in the 1930s, Flitwick Water was sold as a mineral water with exceptional medicinal properties.
1894: Henry John Sylvester Stannard a well-known landscape artist came to live in the village.
1894: The Iron Room, so called because it was built of corrugated iron was opened, it served as a church hall and reading room.
1895: Rev. Frederick Lipscombe published the first Flitwick Parish Magazine in January 1895.
1897: Electricity supplied to Flitwick.
1903: St. Andrew's Church officially dedicated on Wednesday 8th April
1903: Flitwick windmill burnt down on the 10th November.
1904: Flitwick Cricket Club formed on the 3rd June.
1907: Gas supplied to Flitwick
1908: Baptist Church built.
1910: Peat shipped from Flitwick Moor by train to Leicester, Nottingham and Desborough to be used for the purification of coal gas. This ended in 1967 with the introduction of North Sea gas.
1911: The Rev. J.L. Ward Petley published his book "Flitwick : the story of an old Bedfordshire village".
1919: "Victory Hall", a corrugated iron structure, was built in Steppingley Road next to the cricket pitch. The hall was acquired by the parish council in 1947 and renamed the village hall.
1922: Dedication of Village War Memorial.
1928: Mains water and sewerage service supplied.
1936: Flitwick Women’s Institute founded.
1941: Large numbers of evacuees in Flitwick. Various entertainments were provided for them.
1948: Leeming Dairies founded.
1954: Redborne Secondary School opened.
1965: Kingsmoor Primary School opened.
1969: New Village Hall opened.
1974: Woodlands Middle School opened.
1977: Flitwick Squash and Social Club formed.
1977: First Flitwick Carnival, it started as a programme of events to celebrate the Silver Jubilee.
1979-81: new school premises in Temple Way built. The old school premises then leased and later sold to Flitwick and District Youth Association
1981: Tesco Supermarket opened on Tuesday 24th February; 160 staff were recruited.
1982: Flitwick Library opened on Monday 6th December.
1983: Flitwick Moor purchased by The Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire Naturalists Trust.
1984: Flitwick Leisure Centre opened. This was replaced by a new leisure centre in 2016.
1987: Flitwick water mill ceased milling
1990: New swimming pool opened on Sunday April 1st.
1994: Flitwick Manor House becomes a hotel.
2000: Flitwick Town Council moved into the Rufus Centre.
2017: Flitwick mill converted into a house.