A Walk Into The Past In Totternhoe

Having been established in Dunstable for so many years we have a number of pictures of the town and the surrounding areas, some of which date back many years.

As we work our way through the pictures we find that unfortunately some are not labelled, however with a bit of detective work we believe we can make some well educated guesses as to the content of the photographs.

The following four photographs were found entered together in a family album. The dapper young man is Maurice Alfred Headey, who was sadly killed aged 19 on the 18th September, 1917 during the First World War.  We believe Maurice is shown sitting on a stile on or around Totternhoe Knolls.

This clearly dates the photographs to circa 1910-15. We’ve entitled this collection of images as ‘A Walk Into The Past In Totternhoe’. We believe the other photographs depict Doolittle Mill reflected in the water of the adjacent mill pond, Totternhoe Stone & Lime Works and a labourer working a field somewhere in the village.

The Totternhoe Stone and Lime Works which would have been in operation at the time was served by a siding from the railway track which then ran along the Sewell cutting to the station at Stanbridgeford and on to Leighton Buzzard.  We believe the funnel shape chimneys sit atop a row of lime kilns in front of which a railway track can clearly be seen.

Should anyone who finds this post have further information please get in touch.

Update.

We’ve located the following information about Totternhoe Stone & Lime Works which includes a similar picture to that shown below confirming its location.  You can also read more about Doolittle Mill here.

We’ve also found another interesting article on the Totternhoe Quarries and some good pictures of Standbridgeford Station.  There are some pictures of the ‘Dunstable Dasher’ here and a lot of information on the Dunstable North Station here.