8 to 10 High Street March 2010

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 8 and 10 High Street [HER 2313] notes that the property dates to the 18th century and is built of colour washed brick with an old tile roof. The shop window in the left hand side of the property is also 18th century.

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 8 and 10 High Street [DV1/C156/146] found it owned by the trustees of Harold Brawn and occupied by butcher Sidney Arthur Jeffs who paid £40 per annum in rent which the valuer considered “very low”

The premises comprised a shop (17 feet by 13 feet 6 inches) and “ice box” or cold store (7 feet by 13 feet), two reception rooms, a kitchen and scullery and four bedrooms above. A washhouse, coal and wood barn and earth closet all stood outside. Water came from a pump in the yard. All in all, the valuer considered it a “big rambling place”.

Outside lay a number of buildings connected with Jeffs’ trade as a butcher and were rented along with the house and shop. These included: a brick and tile cowplace for five beasts and meal room with a loft over; a wood and tiled two bay open hovel; a wood and corrugated iron poultry house; a wood and corrugated iron pig box; a wood and tiled slaughter house; three wood and tiled pig pens; a wood and corrugated iron pig box and yard; two wood and corrugated iron pigsties and yards; a wood and corrugated iron store barn used as a garage and a sausage room.

Until at least 1949 the post office was at 25 High Street [X535/5]. In 1974 planning permission was sought to alter, extend and improve the premises by grocery firm Dudeney and Johnston Limited [BorBTP/74/1077] and two years later permission was sought for alterations and extensions to what had, by then, become the post office by R. J. and M. Denton [BorBTP/76/1031]. In 1997 an application was made to change use from an office to residential accommodation [PCGreatBarford18/51] but at the time of writing [2010] the premises remains a post office.