Ouse Valley Books

Recently I attended a Provincial Booksellers' Fairs Association fair near my home. The first stand I came to was Bedfordshire-based Barrie Farnsworth's - and I bought a Bedfordshire book immediately.

Barrie's secondhand stock includes Bedfordshire history. He does not have a website yet but says that enquiries to ousevalleybooks@btconnect.com are welcome.

Buzzard Books, Leighton Buzzard

Today I discovered another independent bookshop in Bedfordshire that includes books on local history in its stock.

Buzzard Books is at 1 High Street Mews, just off the High Street and shopping area in Leighton Buzzard. Tucked away but easily visible to anyone glancing down the mews, its crisp blue bookshop sign is difficult to miss. The shop was set up in 2006 by Colin Ashby, fulfilling a 25 year dream to own his own bookshop after working for national booksellers.

It is a small shop and, when I visited it for a book launch, it was overflowing with people and books. That didn't stop me having a good look round as well as chatting to people at the launch. There was a prominent display of the book being launched, Leighton Buzzard and Linslade: a History, and a bookcase of books about Leighton Buzzard, the surrounding area and some of the recent books on Bedfordshire as a whole. I also noticed a selection of Cassini historical maps for the area.

The rest of the shop was eminently browsable and my companion remarked especially on the excellent quality of the children's books. They also feature in the links on their website http://buzzardbookshop.tbpcontrol.co.uk which lists some of the stock and provides for online ordering.

Of course it is not necessary to visit a bookshop to buy books these days, but it is so much more fun to do so and discover hitherto unknown books. So, if you are passing by, buzz down the Mews and discover local history books for Leighton Buzzard and the area and experience the independent bookseller's boast of a shop with 'great service, great knowledge and pleasant atmosphere'.

Where is that place?

Did you know that -

• Bedfordshire has its own California, Ireland and Stratford?

• ‘end’ is probably the most common placename element (even more common than ‘green’) in Bedfordshire hamlets and that there are fourteen places called Church End and six called Water End?

• St Peter de Dunstable was a parish in Bedford, not Dunstable?

• many places have the suffix –hoe, –oe, -o or –ow (derived from the Old English hoh, describing the shape of a hill)?

This and much more fascinating information about places in Bedfordshire can be discovered from Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service’s website.

It is unfortunate that the websites of county record offices and public libraries are so often hidden within the complex structures of local government websites because many of them contain information treasures for the local historian. BLARS’ home pages are one such hidden treasure. They are subsumed under Leisure and Culture at http://www.bedfordshire.gov.uk and are vital for Bedfordshire’s historians. One of the most useful sections is the Guide to Bedfordshire Parishes within the section on Guides to Collections.

It lists the county’s ancient and modern parishes (as you would expect), dating many changes of status. It explains civil parishes and ecclesiastical parishes. It notes the effect of county boundary changes on the counties into which parishes or parts of parishes fall. It also lists ‘hamlets, townships, ends and localities’ - the small places, the dispersed settlements that seem to occur in all except the smallest of parishes and are often so difficult to locate. And it goes beyond the county by listing the 80-or-so contiguous parishes and hamlets in the counties adjoining Bedfordshire.

Altogether, a treasure trove for local place names and an example for other counties to follow.