Made in Luton Page on paulrance.com; Extracts from Paul Rance's book, Made in Luton

Made in Luton Page on paulrance.com

(Extracts from Paul Rance's book, Made in Luton - that is available from Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon sites worldwide, in paperback, hardback and Kindle here)

Made in Luton by Paul Rance paperback cover

Made in Luton paperback cover

Our Made in Luton page on Facebook

AND, sort of connected... Luton Town FC in the 1970s by Paul Rance; an extract from the 1970-71 season - Luton Town's Noble Premier League Debut by Paul Rance

More from the Made in Luton project here:

The Forgotten Lionesses - a Personal Story by Paul Rance

Paul Rance's Blog: Made in Luton by Paul Rance (Extract) (booksmusicfilmstv.blogspot.com) Family Tragedies from Made in Luton (booksmusicfilmstv.blogspot.com)

Made in Luton. The First Three Paragraphs Read by Paul Rance - YouTube

Magical Places

Warden Hills I think of as my spiritual home. The two hills that overlook the area of Warden Hill and Luton itself - Warden Hill and Galley Hill - now make up a site of special scientific interest (it became Luton's first nature reserve in 1993). I only really understood how historically significant these two hills are after I had left Luton.

Galley Hill (the smaller of the two hills) was used by the Beaker People as a burial site, and is now considered one of the most important Neolithic sites in the whole of Europe. Galley Hill was also a place used for public execution, and people were hanged there. The location of the gallows gave a grim warning to anyone entering the town with criminal intent. It seems strange now, looking back, that I went for idyllic walks there with my parents and our boxer dog Dano from 1981 to 1983 blissfully unaware of the place's dark past.

Dray's Ditches in the Warden Hill area (a track running up to the hills at the end of Turnpike Drive is part of them) is another site of historical importance that has Iron Age origins. I have to admit that I was oblivious to it when I lived in the area, as I was the Waulud's Bank Neolithic henge when I lived in Leagrave. This was built around 3,000 BC and is on the edge of Leagrave Common.

Some Early Memories

The local shops were in Runfold in Birdsfoot Lane. When new shops were created round the corner from Laburnum Grove in Birdsfoot Lane, these 43 were known as 'the New Shops', and the ones in Runfold 'the Old Shops'.

My Mother remembered taking me to 'the Old Shops' in Runfold in the pram while What Do You Want by Adam Faith was playing. As a little boy I'd run errands visiting 'the New Shops', and one guy, Reginald Stevens, who served me there later moved to run a Post Office in Luton. He was to die in very tragic circumstances. He was murdered at a Luton Post Office in 1969 in a case that became infamous, and was investigated by BBC reporter Ludovic Kennedy regarding a miscarriage of justice. The convicted men, David Cooper and Michael McMahon, had their convictions quashed in 2003, but only after their deaths and after being jailed for 10 years each.

There would be some strange sights in Laburnum Grove when I was a child. There was the dog with three back legs I'd tell my parents about, but one of the 'legs' was an indicator that the dog was, in fact, a well-endowed male. The innocence of childhood... I was a busy child, and even helped workmen in Laburnum Grove when I was little!

I started school in 1965, and as it was only 20 years after the War there were still some vestiges of wartime visible, including at our school if legend is to be believed. The former bomb shelter on the Icknield Way side of Warden Hill Infant School apparently had ghosts of victims, which were rumours my friends and I were happy to share with newcomers to this intriguing place.

Winston Churchill's funeral was on TV around the time I started school, and according to my Mother I said, aged 5: "It must be horrible to be dead." 44 Though later in life, strangely, death doesn't seem so terrifying.

A succession of nice female teachers were inspirational for me in my early school years. I can't quite right remember whether they were Miss or Mrs., but I'll use both. Take a bow, Miss/Mrs. Sweet, Miss/Mrs. Greener, Miss/Mrs. Naylor. I was one of the brighter kids in my class, but as was proven later, that really depended on how good my teachers were. Some children do well regardless of what teacher they have, but I wasn't one of those children.

Selected Extracts

The Truant

In my final year at Icknield I had pretty much lost interest in school, and, along with friends such as Andrew Cook and Martin Hodges, we would sign into registration and take a train to London for a nice day out. Pretty outrageous.

I'm not sure how long it was after the bunking off to London trips that I told my Mother about it. I presume I was wise enough not to mention it until I had left school. My Mother was completely oblivious thinking I was getting my head down and not getting lost in Balham, looking at vinyl records in a cool record shop in the capital, or visiting Capital Radio. When she did find out, she said: "I'd have had forty fits." I can only imagine the fall-out if a kid at school had revealed we were not in school, because we were over 30 miles away...

* * *

In 1977 and 1978 there was a gang of four of us. Me, Gez, Gary Smith and Gary Winn that used to go all over the Luton and Dunstable areas, and some of the villages, including the Chequers in Streatley (post-cider years!) that we'd frequent (on a Sunday). Gary Winn had a Ford Capri, so we weren't going to have to try too hard to get girls I thought. Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street seemed to be always in my ears wherever we seemed to be. One memory of us was outside the Old Moat House pub in Moat Lane singing the high-pitched chorus of Stayin' Alive by The Bee Gees. Both the Chequers and the Old Moat House were pubs we visited regularly, along with the Warden Tavern, the Wheatsheaf in Bishopscote Road, the Black Swan in Black Swan Lane, and the Boater at the bottom of Laburnum Grove just off Icknield Way (usually with Gary Smith on a Sunday morning).

Chapter Two - Roots (Extract)

Luton was a tough place even during the time of the Vikings. In the year 913 a Viking raid didn't go to plan and the invaders were sent packing.

Luton now has a population of over 200,000, and has grown exponentially in the last hundred years. In Queen Victoria's time the epicentre of the town was pretty much as it is now, with St. Mary's Parish Church in Church Street being the most well-known building. The centre of the town and High Town was the whole of Luton back then.

However, 150 years ago so many areas of Luton were actually villages or hamlets joined to the town, or in the case of Runfold, Lewsey Farm, Sundon Park and Marsh Farm didn't exist at all. Leagrave, Limbury-cum-Biscot, Stopsley, East and West Hyde were all hamlets in 1896. The first three places only became part of Luton in the 20th Century, and Warden Hill was part of Streatley until the second half of the 20th Century. While Bramingham was two farmhouses and farmland until the 1980s. Two farms at Bramingham (rather beautifully once known as Bramblehanger Manor), Great and Little Bramingham, were part of the Page-Turners estate, and Frederick Augustus Blaydes inherited these.

I was a poet and my first 11 years or so were spent in a Luton bungalow. I don't find John Hegley's poem about growing up in a Luton bungalow quite as offensive as Ken Worthington here.