Dunstable Yesteryear: Where a war-time bomb fell

Dunstable, unlike neighbouring Luton, escaped comparatively unscathed from war-time bombing but there were some scares.

A stick of bombs was dropped in the Totternhoe Road area, causing worries that the Germans had traced the heavily camouflaged location nearby of the Meteorological Office.

But there were no further attacks on the area and the weather-forecasting station continued with the work which was was to prove particularly vital for the D-Day invasion.

Dunstable History Society member Les Marsh took this photo in the 1990s of the meadow alongside Totternhoe Road, near the top of Lancot Hill, where there had been a crater left by one of the bombs.

By then, the crater had been filled in. The site is now a housing estate called Badgers Gate, after the animals which once roamed the area.

Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.