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Bedford

Town and administrative headquarters of Bedfordshire, southern England, on the River Ouse, about 80 km/50 mi north of London; population (2001) 82,500. Industries include light engineering, food-processing, aircraft services, and the manufacture of agricultural machinery, diesel engines, pumps, bricks, communications systems, and electronic components. The writer John Bunyan is said to have written part of The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) while imprisoned in the town.

Bedford is also the administrative centre of the historical Borough of Bedford, which was awarded Charter status by Henry II in 1166.

Features

St Paul's Church dates from the 14th and 15th centuries. The interior was restored in the 19th century. It contains monuments to the important local benefactor William Harpur (1496–1573) and his wife, Alice. Outside the church is a statue of John Howard, the prison reformer, who was appointed high sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1773. In the nearby village of Elstow is the Abbey Church of St. Helena and St. Mary, restored in 1880, which is the remnant of a 13th-century monastic church.

Museums and galleries The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery includes a collection of English watercolours, 20th-century prints, porcelain, glass, and Bedfordshire lace. A museum adjoining the Bunyan Meeting House, built on the site of the chapel in which John Bunyan preached, displays relics of the author and copies of The Pilgrim's Progress in many languages. The late 15th-century Moot Hall in Elstow, where Bunyan was born in 1628, also contains exhibits illustrating life in the time of the writer. Bedford Museum was established in the 1960s and houses collections relating to local archaeology, social history, biology, and geology.

Famous people Distinguished figures associated with the town include John Bunyan, and William Harpur, who was born in Bedford and became Lord Mayor of London in 1561, and who founded a grammar school in the town. The Harpur Trust was established to administer the school and later founded others in the town; it still supports Bedford School, a private boys' school, and other educational institutions.

Bedford

City and administrative headquarters of Lawrence County in south-central Indiana, 32 km/20 mi south of Bloomington; population (2000) 13,800. It is a major limestone-quarrying and stone-milling centre. There are also industries manufacturing aluminium products, tools, refrigerators, and furniture.

Nearby are a state fish hatchery, Bluespring Caverns (with a navigable underground river), and Hoosier National Forest.

Bedford

Town in Middlesex County, northeastern Massachusetts, 23 km/14 mi northwest of Boston; population (1998 est) 12,400. It is a residential and industrial suburb, with its economy largely based on such industries as electronic and systems research and software production.

Bedford was founded in 1729, and developed around a 17th-century American Indian trading post. A veterans' hospital and Middlesex Community College (1969) are in the town, as is a large part of Hanscom Air Force Base, which straddles the town's borders with Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington, in the south. The air force base employed around 23,000 people in the late 1990s. An attraction is the Job Lane House, which dates from 1790.

Bedford is noted for the Bedford Flag, a crimson flag featuring an arm holding a sword, which probably dates from 1720, and was flown on the American side at Lexington and Concord during the Revolutionary War in 1775. Another souvenir of the war is the annual Pole Capping Ceremony celebrating the activities of the local troops, the Minutemen.

Bedford

Town in southern New Hampshire, 5 km/3 mi southwest of Manchester; population (1990 est) 12,600. Like neighbouring Amherst, settled in 1733 as a grant to the veterans of the Narragansett War (1675) and primarily agricultural in its history, it is now an expanding Manchester suburb.

Bedford

Town in southeastern New York State, 53 km/33 mi northeast of New York City; population (1990 est) 16,900. Mount Kisco, Bedford, Bedford Center, Bedford Hills, and Katonah are parts of this affluent community.

The estate of John Jay, the Caramoor Center (arts and music), and the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (for women) are in the town.

Bedford

Town in southern Nova Scotia, Canada, 10 km/6 mi northwest of Halifax, at the head of Bedford Basin, the inner section of Halifax Harbour; population (1991) 11,600. It is a rapidly growing suburb.

It was formerly a base for Native North Americans and European fishermen, a paper milling centre, and a resort in the late 19th century. It is now chiefly a bedroom community.

Bedford

City in northeastern Ohio, 18 km/11 mi southeast of Cleveland, of which it is a residential suburb; population (1990 est) 14,800. Products manufactured here include office furniture, rubber goods, machine tools, and aircraft parts.

Bedford was founded about 1813 on the site of an earlier (1786) Moravian settlement.

Bedford

City in northeastern Texas, 19 km/12 mi northeast of Fort Worth; population (1990 est) 43,800. A suburb in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, it doubled in population in the 1980s. Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport is to the northeast.

Bedford Heights Bedford, John Robert Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford Bedford-Stuyvesant Bedfordshire Bunyan, John Cardington Chiswick Elstow Fens, the Fitzhugh, William

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