Market Street

"Markyate (or Markyate Street and Market Street). An old coaching stop on the Roman Watling Street and in the robust south-west of Luton. Before the 1957 arrival of the bypass the narrow street of mainly plain brick cottages with carriageway arches was 'uninhabitable - a day and night stream of lorries travelling both ways' (Ian Nairn). More peaceful now, but quietly thriving with commuter estates on the western side. Strikingly positioned at the village head and behind trees is the Georgian church (Market Street was part of Caddington parish until this time) of St. John the Baptist. "The neo-Jacobean Markyate Cell looks period from a distance, and indeed incorporates bits from the mansion built in 1539-40 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery. "Katherine Fanshawe, nee Ferrers, of Markyate Cell, was very likely the fearless highway-person who terrorized travellers from early in 1660 until her death, aged 26, in June of that year. Her ghost haunts the Cell." [From Hertfordshire (a Shell Guide),R. M. Healey , Faber & Faber, London, 1982]