Makan's Pharmacy, 453 Dunstable Road, Luton

Image: © Robin Stott Taken: 24 Feb 2017

This is the second house I lived in at Luton from around 1948 until we moved to Torquay in 1953. Then it was a detached house and pharmacy on the corner of Chandos Road, foreground. There was a clinic opposite in Dunstable Road; to the north was what I faintly recall as a new housing estate which my parents called Leagrave, all suggesting a planned suburb from the late 1930s or immediately postwar. I remember the house as a pebble-dashed cube. My father's pharmacy was not a deep shop – perhaps extending back only as far as the long downpipe. Now, not only has the pharmacy extended forward but, judging by the bricked-up downstairs bay window (to the lounge), also back into the ground floor, leaving a flat upstairs. In 1948 this was a modern house: it had a light roomy bathroom, a kitchen with gas and electricity although we burnt coal (my mother insisted on anthracite) in an open fireplace in the lounge. There was a garden and a garage, soon occupied by a bronze-effect Vauxhall saloon, doubtless made in Luton, like me. My visit was preceded by a spectacular road accident: the driver of a large van lost control and ended up on the forecourt, causing damage to ten other vehicles: hence all the cars in view and several people standing about doing things on their phones.

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