Extracts from Publications
KEMPSTON, a parish in the hundred of REDBORNESTOKE, county of BEDFORD, 2¾ miles (S. by S.W.) from Bedford, containing 1419 inhabitants. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Bedford, and diocese of Lincoln, rated in the king's books at £12, and in the patronage of Rev. G. Ousley Fenwicke. The church is dedicated to All Saints. There is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists. Within the parish are the sites of several moated buildings.
[A Topographical Dictionary of England - Samuel Lewis - 1831]
KEMPSTON, a village and a parish in the district and county of Bedford. The village stands on the river Ouse, 2½ miles SW of Bedford r. station; and has a post-office under Bedford. The parish comprises 5,160 acres. Real property, £10,868. Pop. in 1851, 1,962; in 1861, 2,191. Houses, 478. The property is much subdivided. The manor-house is the seat of the Williamsons; Hoo House, of Barnard Talbot, Esq.; Kempston House, of Capt. B. Newland; and the Grange, of H. Littledale, Esq. Springfield House, standing on a plot of 18 acres, is a private lunatic asylum. Roman coins, an ancient spur, and indications of a large Saxon cemetery have been found. Kempston Wood is a meet for the Oakley hounds. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely. Value, £350.* Patron, J. D. Allcroft, Esq. The church is partly Norman; has decorated clerestory, aisles, and S porch; has a tower partly Norman, partly later; was restored in 1864; contains a decorated font; and has, in its N wall, a remarkable monumental slab. There are chapels for Baptists, Wesleyans, and Primitive Methodists, a national school, and charities £46. An extensive Saxon burying-place was recently discovered, containing a large number of skeletons, an ancient British coin, two coins of Constantine, a variety of weapons, a unique drinking-cup, and great variety of Saxon ornaments.
[Imperial Gazatteer of England & Wales - 1866-9]
Before the Norman Conquest the countryside around Kempston was part of the northern border of the Saxon kingdom of Alfred the Great. During encounters with the Danes along the Ouse valley this territory was taken and retaken in the tenth and eleventh centuries. William the Conqueror bestowed the manor of Kempston on his niece, Judith, who was responsible for the building of the first church here, and who also founded the once renowned nunnery in the near-by village of Elstow. Her possession of both these places is recorded in the Domesday Survey compiled in 1086. In the thirteenth century the manor of Kempston was held by the Lady Dervorgilla whose husband was John de Balliol. They were the founders of the famous Balliol College at Oxford as well as two abbeys in Scotland. She died in 1290 at Kempston but is buried in her Abbey of the Sweet Heart, Galloway. The life of the village of Kempston was little disturbed during the succeeding centuries until the outbreak of the civil war when most of the ordinary people supported Parliament although the local gentry declared for the King. Various encounters took place around Bedford which was captured by the Royalists but later became Cromwell's headquarters. In 1644 John Bunyan, of the near-by village of Elstow, was conscripted into the Parliamentarian army, serving for three years. He returned home to continue his trade as a tinker and became converted. By 1656 he was preaching publicly and continued to do so until apprehended in 1660 and committed to prison where he started to write his immortal" Pilgrim's Progress". He was released when the laws against Nonconformists were relaxed some twelve years later. His religious influence is still strong in this part of Bedfordshire. The old industries of Kempston and the surrounding places were mainly connected with agriculture, with the cottage craft of lace making which is said to have been introduced by Henry VIII's discarded Queen Catherine while she was residing at Ampthill. With the development of more modern undertakings at Bedford in the latter part of the nineteenth century following the opening of the railway line to join the main line at Bletchley in 1846 and the direct line between Bedford and London in 1868, many inhabitants of Kempston worked in the county town; but various smaller industries also became established at Kempston, and the augmentation of these since the last war has provided increasing local employment.
[The Guide to Kempston Urban District - 1970]
The village lies along the road leading from Bedford, and on the east side is a continuous line of buildings composed of the barracks and of small artisans' cottages which have sprung up within recent years and firm the district known as the New Town. Further south are the hamlets of Up End, where stands St. John's Church, a chapel of ease to the mother church, erected in 1868, and Bell End, where the urban parish ends. Between the road and the Midland railway lies a district which is gradually being built over. It is served by the church of St. Stephen, an iron building erected in 1888, and comprises Springfield House, which stands in grounds of about 30 acres, and is a private asylum for those suffering from mental disease, under the superintendence of Dr. Bower. The county school stands on the other side of the line and has its own chapel and large playing grounds.
Standing in beautifully wooded grounds opposite the county barracks and approached through an avenue of fine elms is the Grange, a modern building, the residence of Mr. James H. Howard. Two fields and some gravel pits divide this property from the schools and then come the almshouses, behind which is the manor-house, the seat of Mr A. A. Armstrong, which stands in a park stretching down to the Ouse. The house is a early 19th century stucco building, having a thin wooden cornice and slate roof. East of the manor-house are a few buildings of half-timber construction evidently of an earlier date than the house. Traces of a moat are still to be seen round the building. Close by, where the river divides in two and forms an island, are a large corn-mill and the gasworks, founded by Mr. F. Ransom in 1869, now managed by a company. The Bury, a modern building, the residence of Mr. Walter G. Harter, stands in an elevated position at the west end of the village just north of the road to Wootton. The house is approached from the road by a drive of large elms. To the south-east of the house are the remains of a high brick garden wall of a 17th-century building with two fine gate piers supporting well-carved stone eagles. To the north of the Bury are a few outhouses of older date than the present building, and beyond these, on the bank of the Ouse, stands the old church of All Saints with the vicarage and the schools. Crosseland Fosse and Moorland, the residences of Captain Beaumont and Mrs. Carpenter respectively, stand opposite each other 2 miles to the north-west of the village on the road to Turvey. Both are modern buildings.
The Hoo, a modern building situated in well-wooded grounds on a small hill west of the village and south of the Wootton road, is the residence of Mr. Thomas H. Barnard.
At Kempston Hardwick, which lies to the south-east of Kempston, is a moat, probably marking the site of the manor-house where the Snowes lived in the 16th century.
In Kempston there are several chapels, among which are Weslyans and Primitive Methodist chapels with a Bunyan Meeting House and a Temperance Hall.
The chief industry is the making of bricks and of drain-pipes, but pillow lace is also made to some extent by the old women of the village.
A remarkable cemetery of Anglo-Saxon date was discovered in 1863 near a gravel pit to the south of the Bedford road, and many Palaeolithic stone tools have been unearthed here. Pottery belonging to the Romano-.British period was discovered in 1890.
[Victoria County History of Bedfordshire]