Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England. Geographical and Historical information from 1791.

AMPTHILL:
Geographical and Historical information from the year 1791.

"AMPTHILL, a parish and a small neat regular well-built town, delightfully situated between two hills; it has two principal streets, crossing each other nearly at right angles. It has a good market on Thursday, and two fairs, the 4th of May and 30th of November; also a statute sessions, for hiring servants, generally a few days before Old Michaelmas. The post goes out every evening, (Saturdays excepted) at 7 o'clock in summer, and 4 in winter; and comes in every morning, (Mondays excepted.) A stage coach goes three times a week, from the Cross Keys, St. John's Street. Also two stage waggons, one belonging to -- Edwards, of Silsoe, which goes twice a week; the other to -- Rock, of Wooburn, once a week; both from the Windmill, St. John's Street. Near the centre of the town is an obelisk, of Portland stone, in which is an exceeding good pump, for the use of the inhabitants, and in cases of fire; erected by the Earl of Upper Ossory, as the inscription on it denotes; likewise the distance from Bedford, 8 miles, Wooburn 7, Dunstable 12, London 45.

Ampthill Park, the seat of the Right Honourable the Earl of Upper Ossory, is a small distance from the town. Here was the residence of the injured Princess Catharine of Arragon, during the period in which her divorce from Henry VIII. was in agitation; to whose memory, in 1774, the Earl of Upper Ossory, in the site of the castle, erected a Gothic column, designed by the late Mr. Essex of Cambridge, to perpetuate the memory of this ill-fated queen, with an inscription.

Here is a school endowed for teaching 13 poor children, and an hospital, with good allowance for 10 poor men, founded by Mr. Stone. The principal inns are the White Hart by -- Cooke; King's Arms by -- Russell, who keeps the post-office. About 1 mile from Ampthill, is the village of Millbrook, the Rev. George Cardale, Rector and Curate; Bedford Houghton, or Houghton Conquest, about 1 mile, is the property of the Duke of Bedford; Maulden 1 mile; Wrest House, Silsoe, about 4 miles, seat of the Marchioness Grey, well known for the very pleasant and extensive gardens; Flitton 2 miles; Flitwick 2 miles, the residence of Dr. Dominiceti: the house is pleasantly situated; it stands in a small paddock on a dry gravelly soil, bordered by a mill and a large mill-stream, and by several farm and other rural houses: the ground is ornamented with a good kitchen-garden, fish-ponds of constant moving water at a suitable distance from the mansion. In the environs are several noblemens' parks; the roads are good and dry in winter as well as summer. The doctor has erected a neat and convenient apparatus for the preparation and application of his various artificial medicated waters, vapours and dry baths, internal and external suffumigations, frictions, pumping, &c. for the cure of the scurvy, and other impurities of the skin; obstructions incident to the fair sex; consumptions; dropsies; obstinate rheumatisms; atrophies; contractions; white swellings; scrophulous complaints; fixed pains; ulcers; hysteric and other disorders of the nerves, &c."