Elstow Abbey is the surviving nave of a Benedictine nunnery founded in 1078, and the church where John Bunyan was baptised in 1628 and later rang the bells. Its great thirteenth-century bell tower stands apart from the church, one of only a handful of freestanding church towers in England, on the green at Elstow. Open to visitors; Bedford St Johns station is about 2km north.
