Makan's Pharmacy, 453 Dunstable Road, Luton

Image: © Robin Stott Taken: 24 Feb 2017

This was built as a detached house and shop, one of a pair at the corners of Chandos Road, foreground. It first appears on an OS map of 1938. My father worked here, then took on the business when the old pharmacist, Mr Prosser, retired. We lived here from around 1950. My bedroom was at the near corner. The far window facing Dunstable Road, right, was a stockroom. My parents must have had the bedroom with the bow window. There was a bathroom over the kitchen in the far back corner. The lounge downstairs had a coal fire and a bow window but it looks as though the pharmacy has since been extended back into the ground floor, leaving a flat upstairs. There was a back garden and a garage, soon occupied when my father bought a Vauxhall saloon (presumably made in Luton). The photo was taken about ten minutes after a spectacular road accident. The driver of the van, right, had lost control, hit a car in Dunstable Road then ploughed into cars parked on the kerb and the forecourt. No-one was injured as far as I know but ten vehicles were damaged. That belonging to Mr Bhavash, the current pharmacist, was also completely blocked in. This was on my first visit to Luton since we moved away in 1953.

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