High Town, Luton

About a third of Luton's population was involved in producing hats in the industry's heyday in the 1870s,[16] but by 1999 this had declined to about 1,000,[17] around 0.5% of the population at that time.[18]

However, there are still hat makers and associated trades in High Town.

• I Llewellyn & Co, Midland Road.[19]
• Olney Headwear, Old Bedford Road.[20] The firm has made boater hats for various schools, including Harrow, and one of its customers was the French film star and singer Maurice Chevalier.[21]
• Ken Peirson, Old Bedford Road.[22]
• Nigel Rayment, Frederick Street.[23]
• F Ruegger / Millinery UK, Clarendon Road.[24]
• KR Snoxell & Sons, Clarendon Road.[25]
• Walter Wright Limited, Albion Road.[26]
• Barford Brothers’ dye works on North Street is the last company in the UK producing dyes for the hat trade.[27]
• Boon & Lane Hat Blockers on Taylor Street makes wood and metal blocks for shaping hats.[28]
• Randall Ribbons on Frederick Street supplies hat trimmings, materials and accessories.[29]

Artists living in the area include Abi Spendlove,[30] Asiya Clarke[31][32] and Zena Jay Ellis.[33][34][35]

In 2010, two ‘pop-up’ (temporary) community art spaces were created in empty shops on High Town Road by Luton Borough Council, Luton Culture and community interest company Meanwhile, Space, involving High Town-based artists Abi Spendlove, Fiona Martin and Zena Jay Ellis, amongst others.[36] One of the aims of the High Town Art for All project was to bring the shops back into use as retail spaces, which was successful.[37] The scheme was awarded Best Community Project in Luton's Best 2010 Awards.[38]

There were a further two exhibitions in these former shops. One was by British artist Nigel Grimmer at the end of 2010.[39] The other, by German artists Annette and Erasmus Schröter, was opened by the cultural attaché to the German embassy in early 2011.[40]

Shop 33 on High Town Road, which existed from 2013 to 2015,[41] sold works by local artists and craftspeople.[42][43] It was run by Luton Community Arts Trust.[44] The Flamingo Arts group took over the premises in 2015[45][46] and ran it as an arts workshop until 2017.[47]

High Town used to host an annual festival that included a tug-of-war competition held between teams representing different pubs.[48] The Friends of High Town residents' association ran a High Town Fun Day in 2010 and 2011,[49] where it revived a tug-of-war contest. The Luton-based 33 Arts organisation ran a High Town Festival in July 2013.[50] A coalition of local organisations and faith groups came together to organise the July 2014 High Town Festival and it has been an annual fixture since then on the first Saturday of July.[51][52]

The annual Luton Beer and Cider Festival was held at two venues in High Town: The Drill Hall on Old Bedford Road until its closure,[53] then the Hightown Community, Sports and Arts Centre until 2018 (the beer festival's 36th year) and it has not had a permanent home since.[54]

High Town Matters was an occasional newspaper, published by anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate, and delivered free of charge to homes and meeting places in High Town.[55]

Living Luton TV was an internet television channel for the town, based on Midland Road and run as a Community Interest Company. It existed from 2014 to 2017.[56]

Luton at Large was a 'what's on' guide for the town published by JNB Publishing (now trading as Treacle Factory)[57] on Reginald Street between 1999 and 2016.[58]

Tropical FM TV,[59] which describes itself as an interactive internet-based radio station,[60] used to operate from a building on Midland Road.[61]

The Luton Today website[62] covers news and sport within High Town ward.

From 1998 to 2018, High Town was the home of Greenbank Music Village, a converted Wesleyan Chapel building which offered music tuition, rehearsal and recording studios, and a music shop.[63] The owner of the business, Doog Moody, demolished the property and built four two-bedroom houses on the site.[64][65] All of the music services that were found at the Cobden Street site are now on offer just outside High Town, from Moody's house in Round Green.[66]

The partly High Town-based singerless punk band The Knockouts[67] run music label High Town Records, produce cult fanzine Clod[68] and the Luton Haiku,[69] a daily online ode to the town.

Poet and musician John Hegley, who was brought up in Luton, used to spend time in the Scandinavia Café on High Town Road. He immortalised the eatery in a poem that is displayed on the home page of its website.[70] He returned to ‘the Scandi’ for the High Town Arts and Crafts Fair in December 2012, where he performed and signed copies of his latest poetry collection.[71]

Seán Ó Roideacháin's poem 'High Town Road' ('Baile Ard Luton' in Irish) is about Irish emigrants in The Painters Arms and The Freeholder pubs on High Town Road during the late 1980s.[72]

1st Luton Sea Scouts, Luton's only sea scout group,[73] has its headquarters on Bowling Green Lane.[74] The group's first meeting took place in 1909, in the bedroom of a house in Clarendon Road in High Town.[75]

Alban Neve Deaf Association,[76] which hosted Luton Deaf Club,[77] was based at a purpose-built building on Old Bedford Road from 1962[78] until 2017.[79][80] Luton Deaf Club now meets on a weekly basis, a short distance away, at Hope Church on Villa Road.[81]

The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain has a branch on Cromwell Hill.[82]

The Friends of High Town residents' association meets monthly at the High Town Methodist Church.[83]

The Lea Valley Masonic Lodge is based at The Pavilion on Bowling Green Lane.[84]

There is one GP practice in High Town, the Wenlock Surgery on Wenlock Street.[85]

There is one private dental surgery in High Town, U Smile Dental Practice, which is on Old Bedford Road.[86]

There is effectively a 'green chain' of parks and open spaces across the centre of High Town ward. Bells Close Recreation Ground is the furthest east, linking with the wooded area of People's Park at the top of a hill on its north side, then down the hill to the west to Pope's Meadow and then north-west across the Old Bedford Road to Wardown Park.

Bells Close Recreation Ground has a modern playground and a 'trim trail', and is popular with footballers and dog walkers. People's Park is designated a County Wildlife Site, because of the occurrence of a rare plant species called the Great Pignut (Latin: Bunium persicum), which gives this piece of land limited protection from development.[87] Pope's Meadow is an open and sloping area of grassland, which is popular with sledgers in snowy weather.[88] It is normally used for Luton Borough Council's annual fireworks display in November.[89] Wardown Park could be considered Luton's main park, due its size and central location.

People's Park (incorporating Bells Close Recreation Ground and Pope's Meadow) and Wardown Park each hold a Green Flag Award,[90] recognising them as amongst the best green spaces in the UK.[91]

There are council-owned allotments just off Stockingstone Road, called Stockingstone Leisure Gardens. They were managed by Wigmore & District Leisure Gardens Association[92] until 2015, when it was agreed that plotholders at Stockingstone would run the site themselves.[93]

High Town remains a place to experience traditional pubs.

The Bricklayers Arms on High Town Road[94] is a haven for Luton Town fans when their team is playing at home, but otherwise revels in a reputation for real ale and good conversation.[95]

The Gardeners Call is a nineteenth century pub on High Town Road with a beer garden to the rear.[96][97]

The Painters Arms, also on High Town Road, was rebuilt in 1913 and has several interesting surviving features, including a 'Jug Bar' in the centre.[98] It is now an Irish pub, with Gaelic games shown on its TV screens.[99]

The Well is a double-fronted nineteenth century pub on High Town Road[100] that for most of its life was called The Blockers Arms, and for a few years before its current incarnation was a bar and nightclub called Déjà Vu.[101]

There was a nineteenth century pub on York Street (at its junction with High Town Road) called The Freeholder, which became an Indian restaurant after owner Whitbread sold its pubs in 2001.[102] The business reverted to its original name when it reopened as a bar in late 2012. The Freeholder bar ceased trading in spring 2015.[103] In 2019, the pub was converted into bed and breakfast accommodation called the Eagle Hotel, with a café where the bar used to be.[104]

The British actress Diana Dors, an iconic figure of the 1960s, occasionally served behind the bar at a pub called The Rabbit on the corner of Old Bedford Road and North Street.[105] It was renamed The English Rose and ceased trading in 2017.[106]

Another pub - The Old English Gentleman - existed on the corner of Burr Street and Hitchin Road from at least 1847, and was in operation until 2010.[107] The building was demolished in 2011 and the lot has remained vacant since. Planning permission was granted in 2020 to build a block of nineteen flats on the site.[108]

The number 14 bus travels through the centre of the ward, stopping in several places in High Town on its way between Luton town centre and the neighbouring suburb of Round Green.[109] As such, it could be considered the main bus route through High Town. Other buses with stops in the ward include the 12, 12A, 13, 16, 17, 17A, 19, 19A, 21, 24, 25, 26, 35, 79, 81, 101, 102, 755 and 787.[110]

Part of National Cycle Route 6 passes through High Town in the form of a marked route alternating between shared road and pavement spaces along the A6 New Bedford Road.[111][112][113] There is also a marked cycle route along the Old Bedford Road in High Town, which alternates between shared road and pavement spaces.[112]

The section of Inner Ring Road in High Town has a separate path next to it, shared between cyclists and pedestrians, from its junction with Hucklesby Way and Old Bedford Road to the junction with Hitchin Road.[114]

The Luton-Dunstable Guided Busway,[115] which was opened in September 2013,[116] stops at Luton railway station, although not on the High Town side.[117]

Luton railway station lies partly in High Town ward and has an exit to Midland Road in High Town.[118] The station typically has 10 peak trains per hour to and from St Pancras railway station in London. Trains take between 23 and 46 minutes to complete the journey, making High Town approximately one hour from the middle of the City of London. Thameslink trains also run between Luton railway station and stops south of London, including Gatwick Airport (1 hour 22 minutes) and Brighton (just under 2 hours), as well as to the north of Luton, as far as Bedford railway station. East Midlands Railway runs 'fast' services between Luton railway station and Bedford railway station, as well as stops in Northamptonshire, Leicester, Loughborough, East Midlands Parkway (for East Midlands Airport), Derby and Chesterfield.[119]

Luton's inner ring road passes through High Town on the ward's southern side. In High Town, it starts at a signalised junction with Hucklesby Way and Old Bedford Road, runs under Luton railway station's multi-storey car park on a newly created stretch of road to traffic lights at Hitchin Road and continues along Crescent Road to new lights at its junction with Crawley Green Road.[120] This whole section was fully opened in August 2014,[121] completing the circular route 40 years after the first part of it was built.[122] The aim is to ease congestion in central Luton.

Junction 10a of the M1 motorway is approximately 3 miles or a 10-minute drive from the centre of High Town ward.[118]

• Christ Apostolic Church, Crescent Road[129]
• Christ Embassy, High Town Road[130]
• Family of God Church – Sunday worship meetings held at Hightown Community, Sports and Arts Centre, Concorde Street[131]
• Hightown Baptist Church, Reginald Street[132]
• High Town Methodist Church, High Town Road[133]
• Hope Church, New Bedford Road (access from Villa Road)[134]
• Jehovah's Witnesses, Kingdom Hall, Old Bedford Road[135][136]
• Luton Central Seventh-Day Adventist Church, North Street[137]
• Luton Worship Centre Church, Old Bedford Road[138]
• Park Church (part of Stopsley Baptist Church), People's Park[139]
• St Matthew, Church of England, Wenlock Street
• St Ninians, United Reformed Church, Villa Road[140]
• Winners' Chapel International Fellowship Centre, Living Faith Church Worldwide, Taylor Street[141]

The Methodist Chapel, built in 1897 on the north west side of High Town Road

• BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple, Hindu), Crescent Road[142]
• Masjid Ibrahim (mosque, Muslim), Dudley Street[143]
• Po Shin Tao Teh Association (meeting place, Taoist), Havelock Rise[144][145]