Carly Smith

2 days ago | lutontoday.co.uk | Carly Smith

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565Visit Shots! nowThis rarely seen photograph, taken from author Mike Allen’s personal collection, shows residents of the now demolished Dorset Street in the Park Town area of Luton enjoying festivities to mark VE Day, 80 years ago. It shows ordinary people who lived through an extraordinary time - and were lucky enough to see the end of the war, and the uncertainly and devastation it brought to Luton and its residents.

2 weeks ago | lutontoday.co.uk | Carly Smith

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565Visit Shots! nowThis photograph, taken in 1980, shows a group of proud Luton schoolchildren at a prizegiving ceremony at Beech Hill High School on Dunstable Road. It accompanied a newspaper article detailing how around 100 girls aged five to fifteen had been studying their Muslim religion at a Mosque in Bury Park, as part of a programme organised by the UK Islamic Mission.

1 month ago | lutontoday.co.uk | Carly Smith

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565Visit Shots! nowRecent visitors to Luton Town Centre may have noticed that the long-derelict ABC Cinema is now covered in a colourful 1930s-inspired mural by artist Sarah Hodgkins.

1 month ago | lutontoday.co.uk | Carly Smith

In the days before Netflix, Firesticks, and even television, Lutonions wishing to see moving pictures would have to leave their home and visit one of the town’s many cinemas to witness the magic of the movies. Established in 1911, The Picturedrome at 87 Park Street was Luton’s second purpose-built cinema after the Anglo-American Electric Picture Palace on Gordon Street, which had opened in 1909.

1 month ago | lutontoday.co.uk | Carly Smith

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565Visit Shots! nowThis image, taken from Mike Allen’s wonderful book, World’s End, shows Bertha Ayres outside of her general store on the corner of May Street and Baker Street. It was likely snapped in the late 1920s or 1930s. Widowed in 1926, Bertha was in her 40s and a single mother to three children when she took on the responsibility of running her own business.