Leighton Buzzard into the Renaissance and the Civil War and beyond

In 1645 a fire occurred in the High Street which meant rebuilding was necessary. Around 10,000 Parliamentary troops were billeted in Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable and the surrounding area at the time and the matter was taken to the House of Lords on 23rd July 1645: "Petition of the distressed inhabitants of Leighton Buzzard, Beds. By a fire which happened on the 7th of March last, great damage was done to buildings and property in the town, amounting to £14,368/17/-. Petitioners, who have been forward in all payments for Parliament, and have in consequence been mercilessly plundered by the enemy, pray that the House will grant them a collection in London and elsewhere for their relief". Nearby Woburn was burned by Royalist troops in November of that year.

The first great surge in the development of Leighton Buzzard from a medieval market town came after the inclosure of the town in 1848. Inclosure meant the break up of the old medieval system of large, open fields in which individuals had strips to farm into the modern pattern of smaller inclosed fields; each individual receiving land proportionate in size and quality to their strips in the old common fields. Newly inclosed fields were quickly sold off as building plots as the town began to grow following the arrival of the London and North Western Railway at Linslade in 1838. A large part of this development took part in the existing roads either side of North Street such as Bedford Street as well as a whole network of newer roads such as Ashwell Street. The town also began to expand northwards along modern Church Street, Heath Road and Plantation Road. This phase of building was comparable to that on the eastern outskirts of the town between Billington Road and Vandyke Road since the Second World War.

Examples of the some of streets developed across this period in Leighton Buzzard include Hockliffe Street, formerly called Jeffs Lane and Gig Lane which may have been part of medieval Leighton Buzzard or a later development but certainly seems to have been in place by the 15th century as noted in manorial court rolls [KK944/2]. Its narrow width suggests it was a later development than the broad High Street and Lake Street. The only development along the street seems to have been at its west end where it ran into the Market Square up to the modern 21a Hockliffe Street before the middle of the 19th century.

The modern West Street was originally called Friday Street (the modern Friday Street being called Stairs Lane) and this seems to have begun to be developed in the last half of the 18th century and first half of the 19th century, as Bevan's map shows. The street seems to have been originally just a back lane for properties on the north side of the High Street and was called Back Lane into the 19th century and even on the 1901 Ordnance Survey map. The modern Bassett Road, running up towards Leighton Mill also had some minor development before the middle of the 19th century. Other areas seeing some minor settlement were all off North End - Birds Eye Lane (Bedford Street), Saint Andrew's Street, Lammas Walk and Windmill Road (Beaudesert).

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