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The English town of Bedford, a few miles north of London’s outer suburbs, was the original Garden of Eden — or so believed a group of Victorian women. The group, who called themselves The Panacea Society, made sure to keep the house in which they were based in a constant state of readiness for the return to Earth of Jesus. His visit, they felt certain, would start with a trip to their town.
The Panacea Society’s last member died over a decade ago — so there is no one left alive who would mistake my hometown for a biblical paradise.
From a distance, the market town is a respectable mix of mid-century housing estates and medium-rise flats. Since the last of the old industrial brickwork chimneys was demolished in 2021, it has had no major landmark to speak of. But the unremarkable flatness of Bedford’s landscape is turning out to be its greatest asset — if you like roller coasters.
Earlier this month, the UK government gave the green light on an investment plan that will turn Bedford into the sixth Universal Studios branded theme park — joining sites in Orlando, Hollywood, Osaka, Singapore and Beijing. The new park hopes to overtake Disneyland Paris — currently Europe’s biggest theme park — by attracting more than 15mn visitors every year.
The construction of a glitzy all-American theme park will take six years to complete, causing widespread disruption. Yet according to Universal, local residents gave the highest percentage of positive responses the company had ever seen for a potential project, with 92 per cent in favour of the plan.
As someone who grew up in Bedford, I can guess why. Bedfordians are endlessly keen to show off their history of industrial ingenuity.
The site that has been chosen to host the new 700-acre park is the former Stewartby brickworks — once the biggest in the world, with 167 chimneys rising 70 metres into the sky. The bricks that were made here for over a century turned Bedford into a multicultural town, attracting workers first from Italy and later India.
But Bedfordshire hasn’t made bricks since 2008, leaving its young population with an above-average unemployment rate.
Nor was its history preserved. Although the closed brickworks were earmarked for heritage preservation they were later demolished to make way for housing.
Universal has skilfully tapped into local pride by promising to draw on this “vibrant history” (including using local bricks). The project is of a piece with transport upgrades across the area. East West Rail, scheduled to complete in the mid-2030s, will make Bedford one of the best-connected towns in the country, linked to Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge.
If park designers really want to tap into local pride and get bored of installing hot dog and burger stands they might consider selling a local delicacy called “Bedfordshire Clangers” — a pastry traditionally eaten by farm workers that has a savoury filling at one end and a sweet one at the other.
By the time Universal opens its gates in 2031, Bedford may finally have a professional football club too. It is one of the largest towns in the UK without one — something the billionaire Winklevoss twins have set their sights on changing. The American pair have earmarked a £3.5mn investment in Real Bedford, a non-league club acquired by bitcoin podcaster and Bedford local Peter McCormack.
But the area’s transformation hinges on the theme park. The UK already has four of the top 20 most visited theme parks in Europe: Legoland Windsor, Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park. If Universal’s targets are to be believed, the new attraction will eclipse the current number of combined visitors for all four.
Bedford residents have no doubts it will top these — and Florida’s too. When I asked one local, Harriet Masterson, how she thought a theme park here would compare to the original — which she visited as a child — she was clear that it would be just as appealing: “Obviously they’ve got the weather,” she said. “But we’ve got the culture.”
