Stanbridge is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated ''Beds'') is a Ceremonial County, ceremonial county in the East of England. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Hertfordshire to the south and the south-east, and Buckin ...

which lies east of

Leighton Buzzard Leighton Buzzard ( ) is a market town in Bedfordshire, England, in the southwest of the county and close to the Buckinghamshire border. It lies between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton/ Dunstable and Milton Keynes, near the Chiltern Hills. It is nor ...

. It also borders the Bedfordshire villages of Hockliffe,

Eggington Egginton – or Eggington as it is now known – is a village and civil parish in the Central Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England, about three miles east of Leighton Buzzard. Apart from the village itself, the parish also inclu ...

Tilsworth Tilsworth is a small village and civil parish in Bedfordshire. It lies to the north west of Dunstable, and the Roman Watling Street ( A5) forms the north east boundary of the parish of 1,200 acres (4.8 km2). The village lies on the ...

, Totternhoe and Billington. There was a windmill to the east of Mill Road, in the north of the village, that is marked on early

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

maps. To the west of Mill Road, still standing, is a later windmill that has been converted to a three-story house. This has recently had a new dome fitted to its roof. St John the Baptist Parish Church is also located in the village. Stanbridge had its own

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

, until it was closed in the 1960s by

Lord Beeching Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who for a short but very notable time was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the e ...

. This was to the south of the village, at Stanbridgeford on the Leighton Buzzard to Dunstable LNWR line. The eastern part of the old line has been utilised as a footpath to Sewell and

Dunstable Dunstable ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, east of the Chiltern Hills, north of London. There are several steep chalk escarpments, most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the north. Dunstable is the fou ...

; the western part is now part of the Leighton Buzzard Southern Bypass. RAF Stanbridge was built on land that was in the neighbouring parish of Billington,

, ''Bedfordshire Sheet XXVIII SE'', Provisional Edition A, 1950. but the town of Leighton Buzzard has now expanded over much of the base. The village has a traditional English country public house called ''The Five Bells''. Stanbridge is part of the political ward of 'Heath and Reach' which sends a Councillor to Central Bedfordshire Council. The ward includes the villages of Heath and Reach, Hockliffe, Eggington, Stanbridge, Tilsworth, Tebworth, and Wingrave. The ward was created in 2011 and has since been represented by Councillor Mark Versallion.

Education

The education authority, for the Leighton Buzzard area, since September 2019, calculates distances from each residence to the nearest lower school (in most circumstances) and uses that to determine priority admissions; the education authority uses computer systems to do this. Designated catchment zones are, as of 2024, no longer used for lower schools in the Leighton Buzzard area. Stanbridge is among the areas under this admissions regime.

References

External links

Stanbridge Parish CouncilStanbridge pages
at the

Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service The Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service is a county record office, holding archival material associated with Bedfordshire and Luton. Established in 1913 by George Herbert Fowler (1861-1940) as the Bedfordshire Record Office, it w ...

Leighton-Linslade Past Times
(select a topic – What's in a name, Guided Tours (Churches; Pubs, Inns & Hotels), Trade Directories, Census, Local People (Wills), Manorial History, Impacts of Wars, Populations – then click on the "Stanbridge" tab) Villages in Bedfordshire Civil parishes in Bedfordshire Central Bedfordshire District {{Bedfordshire-geo-stub