Houghton Regis
[From Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England 1831.]
HOUGHTON-REGIS, a parish in the hundred of MANSHEAD, county of BEDFORD, 1£ Mile (N.) from Dunstable, containing 1283 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Bedford, and diocese of Licoln, rated in the king's books at £11.3.4. The Duke of Bedford was patron in 1819. The church, dedicated to All Saints, contains an ancient monument, with the statue of a man in armour beneath a highly decorated arch, in the early style of English architecture. A free school was founded and endowed, in 1654, by Thomas Whitehead, with an estate and £250, for the education of twenty poor children; the annual income is £50, and sixteen boys are instructed. This place, as its name imports, was anciently held in royal demesne.