22 Bedford Street Woburn

The Bell and 22 Bedford Street (left hand side) May 2012

Today 22 Bedford Street forms part of The Bell Inn but this is a comparatively recent development. 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. Woburn, like much of the county was valued in 1927 and the valuer visiting 22 Bedford Street [DV1/C137/91] found that it was owned, like The Bell, by Bedford brewer Higgins and Sons but was occupied by a different tenant, John Barker, a butcher, who paid rent of £28 per annum.

His ground floor accommodation was as follows: a shop divided into areas of 10 feet 3 inches by 15 feet and 10 feet 3 inches by 2 feet 3 inches; a living room measuring 11 feet 6 inches by 16 feet 6 inches; a kitchen measuring 11 feet 6 inches by 10 feet and a scullery. Upstairs were three bedrooms measuring, respectively 17 feet 6 inches by 12 feet, 17 feet by 12 feet and 10 feet 6 inches by 9 feet 6 inches. A garage, a slaughterhouse and boiler house, an engine house with an oil engine and sausage machine with two lofts over and a W. C. all stood outside.

Directories for Bedfordshire were published from the early 19th to mid 20th centuries. J. Barker and Sons, butchers of 22 Bedford Street are listed in 1928, 1931, 1936 and 1940. In the latter year they shared the premises with butcher Frederick George Hurst.

22 Bedford Street was listed by the former Ministry of Works in January 1961 as Grade II, of special interest. It dates from the 17th and 18th centuries and was reworked in the 19th century. It is built of red bricks with roughcast render applied over them; the property has a clay tiled roof.