Stewartby

Stewartby is a model village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, originally built for the workers of the London Brick Company. The village was designed and built to the plans of the company's architect Mr F W Walker, a later and more modern development than such better-known Victorian model villages as Saltaire. Started in 1926, Stewartby also is a later model than Woodlands which was first planned in 1905. The later retirement bungalow development of the 1950s and 1960s with the pavilion community centre in their midst was designed by the well known neo-Georgian architect Professor Sir Albert Richardson. Today, Stewartby parish also includes Kempston Hardwick.BrickworksOriginally two Wootton farming settlements, Wootton Pillinge and neighbouring Wootton Broadmead, the Wootton Pillinge LBC village was in 1936 renamed Stewartby, taking its new name from the Stewart family, directors of London Brick Company since 1900. The family's famous son Sir Malcolm Stewart had amalgamated LBC with the Forders Company in the village in the 1920s. The site closed in 2008 as the owners, Hanson, cannot meet UK limits for sulphur dioxide emissions. The four chimneys remaining were due to be demolished upon closure but these have since been listed for preservation of Bedfordshire's brick-related history. and will remain.The brickworks was home to the world’s biggest kiln and produced 18 million bricks at the height of production.