Street name will honour Peter’s work

Biggleswade Town Council hopes to name a street after the late Peter Vickers, a popular town and Central Beds councillor who passed away in August.

Members of the council talked about naming a street in the new development south of Potton Road ‘Vickers Walk’ at a meeting on Tuesday (September 25).

Central Beds Council asked councillors to come up with names for two new streets in the development.

Councillor George Wilson suggested ‘Vickers Walk’ and councillors agreed, especially as the name would also fit in with the policy of naming streets in the area after Nobel Prize-winning scientists associated with the University of Cambridge.

The name would also represent engineering conglomerate Vickers-Armstrongs, named after the late Edward Vickers.

Councillors agreed to put ‘Vickers Walk’ and ‘Appleton Close’ forward, the latter in memory of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Edward Victor Appleton.

But speaking in the public open session towards the end of the meeting, former town councillor Duncan Strachan said he was concerned that the tribute to Councillor Vickers could be lost. He said: “Although Vickers Walk would of course be named in memory of Councillor Vickers, with the science theme people who use the road may just assume it is named soley after Edward Vickers.

“Could I suggest that a road is named after Peter Vickers but in another development in the near future?”

Members of the council agreed to debate the issue again, and it was decided that the tribute could be more effective if a road in another area was named after Councillor Vickers.

Councillors voted instead to put forward the names Appleton and Niels Bohr, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1922 for his work in regard to understanding the structure of atoms.