A History of the Universal Studios UK Site

A brief history concerning some of the land which Universal purchased for their potential UK theme park.

You should check out this channel for further updates regarding the progress: @UniversalStudiosGBUpdates

Thanks to Julian Clode @jktc777 for letting me use his shots taken of Stewartby Brickworks in 1990.

Thanks for watching!

well you join me here today in Stewart be bedfordshire where I spent the first 18 years of my life a model Village meaning it was designed and built from scratch in the 1920s especially for the workers of the London Brick Company and at one point Stewart B Brick Works was the largest Brick Works in the world Bedford Shear at one point would have given Lanka Shear a run for its money chimney wise with roughly 130 chimneys dotted across this small County in England this aerial shot I think is from 1952 and just look at the amount of kils and chimneys that we have here I can count about 31 Chimneys in Stewart be alone in these photos this would have been Stewart be brick works at its peak I might delve more into the Brick Works in a future video anyway The Brick Works closed in 2008 and the last four chimneys were demolished in 2021 which I [Music] tended and took a brick from each chimney of course well three years on from that and the local Skyline is set for yet another change to join the ghastly metal incinerator chimney over there brick chimney’s all the way and the wind turbine which hardly ever spins but is today uh that’s roller coasters rides hotels fake volcanoes yeah Universal Studios have purchased large chunk of land immediately north of stewartby and well plan on Plastering one of Europe’s most prestigious theme parks all over it this is one of the former clay pits that served Stewart B brick works and it is absolutely fossil Central around here with it being clay there everywhere you look there are fossils so if you’re into that sort of thing get yourself down here they’re bloody everywhere now this isn’t the first time a large scale attraction has been promised next to Stewart B in 2005 the naira project basically a bigger and better version of the Eden project in Coral was set to be built here on on the 250 acre Quest pit one of the former clay pits for the brick works but as you can see nearly 20 years on and well nothing ever became of that it fell through a plan for a large film studios on this land has also recently fell through which I thought was quite bizarre as I thought that would work well situated virtually next door to a potential Universal Studios theme park but no it wasn’t to be an absolutely huge area uh much like the piece of land just over there which Universal have purchased so let’s take a look at that shall we little fact for you this bridge appear is in Harry Hill the movie and I took a few clips and pictures of him sitting right about here Harry Hill himself has sat here there’s some clips of them filming that particular scene they were here for a good few hours filming back in 2013 when going to see the finished product at the cinema the scene was only lasted about 15 seconds so just goes to show the effort they put into these Productions I think it was a box office flop as well actually but I enjoyed it walking across Stewart B Green you would have once had a fantastic view of the chimneys from here now all gone and it will never not be weird for me to stand here and not be able to see a single one I’m now coming up to where the universal theme park purchased land begins as I approach the ancient Hamlet of wooden broad me and the name Wen broad me didn’t really live on after Stewart be was established in the 1920s although this road remains broad me road now just a farm stands in wooden broad meat here’s how the farm looked before the old farm house was demolished and replaced with a 1960s 70s rendition same tree a few hundred yards up here was the former broad meat halt on the varsity line Bedford to Bletchley right at the very corner of what is Universal’s land uh used to stand the crossing keeper Cottage Gothic style built in roughly 1850 uh but it was demolished in the late’ 60s early ’70s wasn’t really doing any harm was it there were a few additional cot here in the 19th century but they were demolished in the late 20th century but if you go back even further there’s evidence of a medieval settlement here and the most notable piece of evidence for this I think would be the moat which possibly surrounded a medieval manor house the moat is even Illustrated on The Late Victorian Ordinance survey maps and you’re just about able to make out the moat on this 195 5 2 aerial shop apparently it was still visible in 1977 but by 1990 it had been lost to the plow it says here the entire area now plowed tenants spoke of a rectangular area where nothing would grow and plowing up lots of horseshoes I wonder how many are still beneath the soil right now saying that though I was looking at the Historical imagery feature on Google Earth and on one of the 2003 captures you can see a fragment of it reappearing most likely during that 2003 heat wave we had and here I am right now I have arrived at the spot you can go back even further than the medieval times because evidence of Iron Age activity has has been found in this area with some iron AG Pottery being found in a 2013 survey when they were digging trenches for a new housing estate just over there just around the corner to this field archaeological trenches are currently being dug all over this field I would be surprised if they didn’t find anything of historical value there must be plenty of artifacts if they dig in the right places this particular trench right here which has become a decent swimming pool appears to be situated right about where the moat was this is where I’m standing right now I can imagine plenty of interesting artifacts dotted around in the vicinity be great to check these spoil heaps for any evidence of medieval activity I was reading that in the 1970s there were scatterings of 11th and 12th century Pottery found around the area well then it pains me to say that this whole site rich in history is set to become a car park according to the plans how glamorous can you imagine trying to explain to the people living at the medieval manor or moted Farmstead whatever it was in say the 13th century oh by the way not only is your house going to be absolutely decimated by the turn of the 21st century but um it’s going to become a car park would you believe oh sorry oh sort of like a um oh horse with wheels typee thing but the wheels are actually on the horse not not the cart the the uh not not the Chariot the if we take a look at footpath maps. co.uk you’ll be able to see that this is the exact foot path I’m walking down right now which goes straight through the middle of the proposed site for Universal I know that plenty of other YouTubers have already been over here investigating there’s one such YouTuber called Universal Studios updates Great Britain I believe uh make sure you check him out because he will obviously be giving regular updates everything you need to know about the progression of this project I just wanted to go into a little bit more of the history yeah as I say I’m not the first person to come and have a look at these trenches but I finally made it over lots of them are filled with water see if there’s a medieval coin sticking out anywhere on this spoil Heap oh what a piece of luck that would be can you imagine there was a hammer Edward III coin like there but no I can’t see anything not like I can pay too much attention but yeah I think we’ll let the experts have a look I can’t help but think everywhere I go in this field what what will be where I’m standing right now in 10 years certainly not this trench oh something of significance has been discovered there it seems where’s Tony Robinson when you need him these trenches extend up into the very most northern fields of the purchase land and also to this field to the east so I’ll have a quick look in there as well as I approach this Rusty plow we’ll go on into the next field but yeah look at this got some history to it well I mean not that deep really are they I’m back to this rickety old bridge that was in featured in my ghost roads video now just oh frightened this poor duck shame really if only he’d known that he didn’t even need to use that energy to do that completely unnecessary I wasn’t going to I wasn’t going to do anything shame could have conserved that energy right now in this field as seen on the map more trenches we’ve got 1 two 3 four five six seven at least seven trenches in this field anything of historical value in here so I would say that there’s going to be more things found the closer The Trenches are to Broad me Farm but oh my to say these ones are slightly deeper than the ones in the other field so what’s going on here then can anyone tell me is that another drainage example there this time it’s gravel I remember seeing that on um this channel the channel that you should subscribe to to see regular updates no come on let’s against all the odds find a an old coin in one of these spoil heaps on the top come on there’s got to be one there’s got to be one somewhere here unless you’ve got a metal detector good luck with that so if you’re a returning viewer to this channel you might remember a video where I looked at ghost roads and uh in that video you would have seen me walking across this exact field so go up there and when I was it was extremely boggy but today it’s the complete opposite of that it’s bone dry and absolutely no mud is sticking to my shoes this time which I’m very thankful for now you may also remember if you watch that video that I found two old bottles uh one was a Charles Wells uh beer bottle which I’m still yet to get a definitive date on that um but another one was a milk bottle just before that one had my initials on and I initially left this here because I decided just to take one home with me uh to avoid them smashing into each other in my bag so I’m about to find out whether the ab milk bottle is still where I left it let’s hope so cuz I wouldn’t mind taking that one home as well let’s see if I can remember the spot all right I was searching for about 20 minutes but uh couldn’t find it couldn’t I’m pretty sure I remember which tree I left it by so it’s either been taken we all got the wrong tree was pretty stinging nettly over there so some of it was untraversable over there so might just have to go back in the winter and try and find it anyway I’ve now made it to the beginning of what according to the initial plans is to be the lake zone of the theme park Mana road which you can hear just there is acting as the boundary intersecting the two core and L zones and just beyond here past this gated entrance is the site of another former brick works this one was called eastwoods works that was eventually obtained by London Brick Company and added to their extensive catalog just down the road you would have had the London Brick Company Stewart B works and over there coronation works and just here Kempston Hardwick works the brick work triangle you could call it as a kid I vividly remember the word eastwoods written down one of the chimneys over here much like the word Stewart be was written down one of the chimneys at Stewart be Brick Works and iconic chimney there were only two chimneys remaining when I was knocking about as a kid but um I did come to witness them demolish the two chimneys here in 2002 and then the moment the crowd had been waiting [Music] for they used to make 6 million bricks a week here on Sunday the last two chimneys produced quite a few more this former Brick Works building here has had its entrance very recently bricked up due to curious YouTubers entering I uh definitely wasn’t uh hoping to be able to do that myself it’s interesting you know they could just demolish that but they haven’t they’ve bricked up the doorway so could that mean we will see more of this building would be good if they could incorporate this building somehow into the new development maybe if it’s even just a storage building but to have a building that was part of the Old Brick Works being given a new lease of life I think would be quite good especially to preserve the history of the site but not everyone thinks like that do they so I’m not going to get my hopes up for this one but who knows I think they are planning to construct a brand new station along the Bedford to Bletchley line right about here in this general area and subsequently close Kempston Hardwick and Stewart be station and merge them into one brand new station that will serve the entire Universal Park and Stewart be and and anyone in Kempston Hardwick should they remain living there you now join me here at the very North piece of land on an existing footpath which runs straight through it this footpath goes from Wen Road industrial estate in Kempston under the a421 Dual carriageway and over towards where we want to go these now bog standard looking crop Fields used to be the site of cow Meadow race course which was a flat oval shaped course about a mile and a half round it was first recorded in 1730 and horse racing continued here sporadically until about 8 1973 although I think steeple chase meetings carried on a bit longer until the early 1900s as you can see the test pits continue over into these fields more old drainage there it looks like and another one of those gravel lines that we saw earlier there it is ground is a lot more moist today than it was the other day there’s a fossil on the surface what’s interesting is that in 1854 a company was formed to build a stand on land at the south side of cow Meadow which this area was called was constructed from brick and wood was 62 by 38 ft and even included a refreshment room how luxurious the Midland Mainline hadn’t even been conceived of of yet although the vity line did exist and I can imagine that hordes of people would have arrived on that line getting off at probably ELO halt would have been the closest maybe Kon Hardwick remarkably the Crop Marks of this stand are still visible on Google Earth in this field here so I’m just going to go down there and have a little look see if I can actually see it with my own eyes they’re located just outside the universal land boundary by a matter of yards really which means it looks like they might survive for a bit longer but part of the actual racetrack is well almost certainly going to be built over as it would have been roughly in this area I’m in the field in question let’s go and take a look of course the very last person to remember horse racing going on here is long dead and it is today only remembered really by documents and a certain Road at the nearby retail Park which is called race Meadow Way let me just check my GPS to see whether or not I’m standing where the stand used to stand well here I am you would never know that there was ever a building here entire field is just a meadow now it’s not part of the Universal’s plans it is just a few yards from land that is Once Upon a Time in the Victorian age load of people used to meet up here it’s multiple lifetimes ago now it also means that inevitably there are Victorian bits and Bobs scattered everywhere under the under the soil coins keep sakes there must be not quite sure when the stand met its end we know when it was built but there’s no exact confirmation of when it disappeared there we have it could this be a piece of the old stand only time will tell what this particular view will transform into in the next 10 years there’s always a possibility that it could just look exactly the same as this I think the final decision will be made in June 2024 so let’s see what happens so there we have it then I just wanted to highlight a brief history of the landing question for this new theme park and there are a few historic elements that I hadn’t seen anyone else mention as of yet so whether you’re a theme park Enthusiast or just a local who’s interested in the area hope you found it interesting learn a little bit more about the history right I’ve become a bit thirsty now but which Pub is the closest to the exact epicenter of the universal development oh it’s close but I think it’s just about the [ __ ] in in woodon which takes the spot so let’s nip over there shall we do you like that