88 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I

Wardown ParkGrade II park or gardenPutteridge BuryGrade II park or gardenThe Nickel Bag Public HouseGrade II listedFormer Chapel Langley SchoolGrade II listedHart Lane Water TowerGrade II listed+10See all photos

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

c. 1859

1888

1903

1903

1906

c. 1906

c. 1914

1916

Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copied to our own server. Each credit opens the image’s page with its full description and history.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

Of the 88 entries, 36 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 3 entries were listed in 1954, 1 of the 1 Grade I buildings among them. 60 came in 1981, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 2 have been added in the last 15 years.

2 scheduled monuments

Nationally important archaeological sites and monuments, protected by law; work on them needs consent from the Secretary of State, advised by Historic England.

Dray's Ditches

PrehistoricNeolithic enclosure known as Waulud's Bank

2 registered parks and gardens

Putteridge BuryGrade II

Wardown ParkGrade II

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

Everyone born in Luton → Birthplaces from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons.

Luton has 88 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I, including St Mary's Church. George Street West alone has 9 listed buildings. Its older streets lie in 5 conservation areas, the first designated in 1975. Most entries on the list, 56%, are houses, terraces and villas.

Of the 23 people born here before 1900, the best known include Syd Hoar (1895), Jimmy Durrant (1878) and Amy Browning (1881). The big year was 1981, when 60 of the 88 went on the list. Most towns its size have more Grade I buildings: the typical one has 7. Beyond that, per resident it sits near the middle of UK towns; it also has 2 scheduled monuments; and 13% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.