A local businessman, Thomas Wass Flory, began building Friars Walk in about 1936, aiming to provide high-quality houses. It was originally a private road, made of concrete covered with loose, coarse gravel.
The council took over maintenance of the road in about 1939 and at that stage Friars Walk was extended beyond the Bull Pond Lane junction. The new part was called First Avenue.
The first houses, backing on to the recreation ground, were incomplete when war was declared but they were then finished sufficiently to house ATS (women’s army) girls. More Auxiliary Territorial Service personnel were barracked in wooden huts erected on the other side of the road.
Details of those early days in Dunstable are provided in the memoirs of William Thomas Cook, 1884-1958. In 1932 he had built a bungalow which he called The Chestnuts on what was then a meadow approached from Bull Pond Lane.
He recalled that during the war a Blenheim bomber had to make a night-time forced landing on the fields behind the ATS huts. No-one was hurt but it demolished the roof of one of the chicken coops there.
Locals should find much to interest them in this old photo. Children’s swings have yet to be provided on the recreation ground, there are trees lining one side of Bull Pond Lane, Friary Field has yet to be developed and there is just one car travelling down Friars Walk!
Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.