The links from the Photo Trails tab will take you to some postcard collections and town trails. In some, I have tried to match as closely as possible the old postcard views to the modern counterparts. In a lot of cases, it is surprising how much greener the town is now than 100 years ago, as gardens have matured.

Woburn Sands had a reputation as a Victorian health resort, and many people visited to ‘take the airs’. On a bright summer Bank Holiday in the early 1900’s, as many as a thousand visitors would arrive, mostly by train, and everyone wanted cheap souvenirs to take home or send to their friends.

I have collected over 1000 examples of local postcards, and I know there are many more out there.

 

You may also like to visit a site dedicated to old Ampthill images. They have also included this district, so there are sections on Woburn Sands, Aspley Heath School, Wavendon and Aspley Guise, among others.

The photos mostly come from the collection of original glass plate negatives held at Bedfordshire Archives and Record Services (BARS), using some of the Bedfordshire Press Newspapers (Beds Times and Citizen Ltd) Archive. These images would have appeared in our local paper, “The Woburn Reporter”, in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.

To browse the whole site, you can find the main homepage here, but you can go directly to the Woburn Sands photos here, or the Aspley Heath School photos here.

Many thanks to John Day and the BARS team for making these superb images available again after being stored away for so long!