Houghton Regis
Houghton Hall a fine mansion dating from about 1700, stands at the southern end of the old village green on which cricket is still played.
The hall's parkland is now in public ownership and is managed as a natural open space for the enjoyment of the townspeople. The parish church is an impressive perpendicular building with a chequer-work exterior of flint and Totternhoe stone.
Houghton was a royal manor at the time of Edward the Confessor, and the Domesday Book shows it to have been a large and lucrative holding. In the 12th century Henry I annexed a large part of the manor's land to develop his new town of Dunstable, leaving a depleted Houghton to be divided between his illegitimate son and a Norman baron. It remained that way until the 17th century when a wealthy businessman, Henry Brandreth, bought the manor and reunited much of it under his ownership.
Houghton Regis today is a thriving modern community with extensive housing developments, a traffic-free shopping precinct, supermarkets and industrial estates.
The Baptist burial ground in which John Bunyan once preached to large crowds still survives to the northwest of the town in the hamlet of Thorn. Also in the Houghton Regis parish, but tucked away on the opposite side of Watling Street, is the attractive hamlet of Sewell. Nearby are extensive Iron Age fortifications known as Maidenbower and green lanes leading to Totternhoe Knolls across downland and restored chalk quarries
