Central House - 1 Silver Street March 2010

1 Silver Street is an unusual looking building. The Bedfordshire Historic Environment Record [HER] contains information on the county’s historic buildings and landscapes and summaries of each entry can now be found online as part of the Heritage Gateway website. The entry for 1 Silver Street [HER 12314] reads: “19th century two storey house, of brick construction with a hipped slate roof, bay windows”.

The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed to determine its rateable value. Most of Bedfordshire was valued in 1927 and the valuer visiting 1 Silver Street [DV1/C156/71] found it owned and occupied by William Rotherham Bishop who had named it Central Villa. He had bought the place in 1914 for £600, before that it had been rented out at £25 per annum since 1909.

The brick and slate building stood in a third of an acre and accommodation comprised a drawing room to the south-west and south-east, a dining room to the north-west, a morning room (“approach through either foregoing”) with a northerly aspect, a kitchen with a range, a copper for heating water, a sink and a pump and a scullery. Three bedrooms, a bathroom with hot and cold water from a range, and a w. c. lay upstairs. A coal place and a wood place lay outside, together with a coach house, a stable for two horses and a privy. The valuer commented: “House very deceptive and badly planned, all outside show”. 

Kelly's Directory for Bedfordshire lists three occupiers of 1 Silver Street as follows. Dates are those of the directory in which the entry appears, directories only being published at three or four year intervals. 1940 was the last Kelly's for Bedfordshire.

1861, 1863, 1864, 1869: Joseph Humbley
1910: Tom Field Simpson, poultry breeder
1936,1940: William Geoffrey Herbon.