Luton’s High Town in its heyday

The street scene, left, was discovered among the estimated 1.5 million Luton News negatives kept at Wardown Museum.

The reason for the photo being taken for the paper in April 1956 is not clear, but it’s a view of High Town Road that’s very different today.

It was then one of Luton’s busiest shopping streets, lined by thriving small independent businesses.

In the foreground at No 9 is Redrup & Starkings grocers, owned by Frederick Jabez Redrup, whose firm also ran a hardware business at No 1 and a bakery at No 17.

Redrup & Starkings closed in the mid-1960s and was briefly taken over by Snowwis bakers before it became a tool and plant hire company’s base.

Further up the road, at No 25, is a branch of Barclays Bank, which occupied that building from the 1920s to the early 1970s and was later Tony’s hairdressers.

Also visible are H. F. Scriven electrical contractors, which was previously cycle dealer Sidney Richardson and later a dry cleaners. No 51 was Griffiths Brothers butchers from 1939 to 1974.

The smaller picture, above, taken in High Town Road in November 1968, shows drapers E. & M. Dunbar.