Abbey School

In January 1958, a new school - Abbey County Secondary - was opened. It was located on the south side of Elstow brook and was accessed from a driveway from Mowbray Road.
It was built to serve the children of Elstow and the south of Bedford, plus the villages of Cardington, Cople, Cotton End, Haynes, Shortstown, Willington, Wilstead.
In 1965, two new buildings were added; a gymnasium and a block containing facilities for subjects such a woodwork. 
In the 1970s, Bedfordshire County Council did away with the old 11+ system, grammar and secondary schools and introduced the new comprehensive education system. This included the introduction of three tiers of schools: lower, middle and upper.
Thus, in 1976, Abbey County secondary school became Abbey Middle school - for 9 to 13 year olds.

From about 1978 to 2000, weekends, some evenings and school holidays saw Abbey school serving a different age group and function, as the base for Bedford's motorcyclist training center. Abbey's very large playground provided an ideal off-road training area, the site also provided storage for the scheme's training moped and motorcycles and it was also the base from which on-road training was run. 
This first operated under the newly formed 'National Motorcycle Training Scheme' (known as "Star Rider") but, in 1990, the company operating Star Rider  collapsed and a new local, private, non-profit scheme, called "Cardington Biker Training" (CBT), was set up by Beds County Council's road safety officer, Clive Arnold. (Who is now the curator of Moot Hall and webmaster for this website). Cardington Biker Training also took over the running of the centre at Stratton School Biggleswade and acted as an umbrella scheme for the former Star Rider training centres in Flitwick, Luton and Milton Keynes. Over the following year, those centres gained approval from the Driving Standards Agency to operate independently.
CBT continued operating training at Abbey and  Stratton Schools,  providing five levels of courses: the DSA's Compulsory Basic Training; Bedfordshire's own "L Rider" course; DSA Direct Access (rider training for car-driving adults); Advanced riding; Instructor training. CBT also provided instructor training and assessment for all the other training schemes in Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes.  In early 2000, Cardington Biker Training's main instructors decided to retire and its centres at Abbey and Stratton schools closed. The one remaining instructor then opened a training centre in Wootton.

Following the abolition, in 2009, of Bedfordshire County Council, control of schools passed to Bedford Borough Council, who gradually changed the structure of education back from three tier to two. In that process, Abbey school became redundant and it was closed on 1st August 2014,  demolished in early 2019.  The site is now mostly green field but the playground remains, as does the house of the former caretaker.