Tunnel vision of Bronze Age skeleton in Dunstable

Pictured is one of the wooden structures used to hoist buckets of chalk to the surface. The tunnels were 20 feet down, and were dug in 200-yard sections.

The Gazette, describing the operation as a big task for the workmen, later reported their discovery of a Bronze Age skeleton in a garden at Lancot Hill, the home of Mr John Joyce.

It was examined by historian Thomas Bagshawe, who was curator of the Dunstable Museum in what later became the Norman King pub. He remarked that similar skeletons had been found nearby at the Rifle Volunteer pub on the corner of Whipsnade Road.

It was a big week for news in Dunstable, with reports of the winning of a huge contract by Waterlow’s to print the Radio Times, the journal with the second-largest circulation in the world, and the digging of the foundations of a new church in West Street which was to be the first Roman Catholic church in Dunstable since the reign of Henry VIII.

It was also the week of the funeral of local businessman W.H. Barton, at whose home Gary Cooper had stayed while attending Dunstable Grammar School.