Milton Keynes & Me

Vital statistics

Life before

First contact

How I arrived

Early days

Canals & canal boats

IWA

Milton Keynes Narrowboats

Buckingham canal society.

Vital Statistics

Date of Birth:- 19th December 1937.

Mother born:- 24th January 1906.

Father born:- 26th December 1900.

State primary school – Grammar School – Liverpool University

National Service – unemployed – film business – The BBC.

Retirement (whatever that is).

Prologue

The very action of becoming involved in the Living Archive web pages project has been something of a self-revealing process.

In reality I was a relatively introspective individual before coming to Milton Keynes. Since arrival I have become involved in various different social and community groups, which has helped me finally develop my own sense of self.

As most people know the premise on which the sleepy village of Milton Keynes had its name stolen by a new town (or city as it decided to call itself) was invalid by the time the foundations were being dug. London overspill had already been overdone and indeed concerns were being expressed about the depopulation of inner London.

Milton Keynes was not the only centre of population to loose out, Bletchley, Stony Stratford, Newport Pagnell and Wolverton were to become overshadowed.

At the beginning there was a sense of excitement and adventure about the “new city” to be and the grandiose Milton Keynes Development Corporation set about its task of making all the mistakes that the citizens of Milton Keynes now have to live with. This does not mean that there were no good ones because there were - the best of which was the formation of Milton Keynes Parks Trust.Another of the good things was provision for the disabled,not just the accessibility of public buildings but areas of specially designed housing which are now managed by housing associations in the main.People with disability have moved here because it did not exist elsewhere

Mere pedestrians have to find their way along winding routes running the danger of mugging, rape or death, whilst would be racing drivers race to the next traffic jam and roadside shrines in memory of the pedestrian victims of crossing roads increase in number.

The way Milton Keynes residential areas have been developed has been fraudulent. New developments with marvellous views surround those that used to have them, and yet further premiums are charged for the benefit of the views.

The fact that there are sink estates in the city cannot be overlooked and as yet there has been no attempt to redeem the situation.

Whilst it possible to be isolated and lonely in Milton Keynes, the bold spirit which made the mistakes also spawned a wide variety of interest, activities and entertainments that it would be hard to equal elsewhere.

Having been here for a quarter of a century I quite like the place.

For the sake of simplicity I have related seperate areas of involvement, rather than adopt a chronological approach.

My Early Years and Memories

Born towards the end of 1937, my early years encompassed the second world war but my memories of it are few but strong.

I was being carried down to the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden and I saw flames leaping into the air from a basket works about half a mile away.

The next door neighbours had sons in the forces, one in the RAF the other in army. The airman I remember mainly for the thin censored airmail letter from Africa. The other I remember as a “Black Man” as he was involved in the North African campaign – and there he was in his vest sorting through damaged office equipment salvaged from the office where he used to work after a visit by the enemy bombers.

I remembered feeling elated on VE day but probably only as a reflection of my parents relief & joy.However I was really amazed at the VE day fireworks in the local park - better than CMK

A while later I met German prisoners of war working on a farm. Tall blonde sunburnt men with friendly smiles, eating the thickest cheese sandwiches I have ever seen!.

I was born into a relatively affluent family two years before the second world war. My father was a builder of houses and my mother was a greengrocer with a shop very close to New Street Station in the centre of Birmingham.

My father had not seen the war coming and ended up being left with houses that would not sell and the bankruptcy that followed. The dream of J.C. Freeman & Son, Builders was not to be.

Almost to old for call up he was seconded to manage repairing war thedamage to some the Many factories in Birmingham and the industrial West Midlands. However, after war he was employed in industrial construction, working for firms involved in patent glazing, ventilation shuttering and the building of schools and petrol stations structures.

For a young boy travelling round the country with his father during the school holidays a wonderland of many types of industrial scenes were revealed, and added to the store of images that included looking into the ash pan of a Sentinel steam lorry, seeing “The New Street Nuisance”, an 0-4-0 shunting engine that worked the Harborne branch line out of Birmingham New Street station. It carried coal and goods between Harborne and also the sub branch to Mitchell & Butlers Cape Hill Breweryat at Smethwick. The first time I saw it was at the house of a lady whose house backed onto Harborne Station and whose washing had just been covered in smuts from the smoke stack. Later I was to see it in New Street walking through to the News Theatre on the far side to my mother`s shop.

My mothers shop was another window onto the world, getting up at half five catching the bus to do to the wholesale vegetable market. Occassionally I would go with her seeing the world of steaming carthorses inside the vast building, whose roof was supported on huge cast iron columns which rose out of a sea of fresh provender which ranged from watercress to potatoes. Outside there were cafes And public houses open at times which seemed unreal.

Somewhere along the line the war had ended. The first banana & oranges arrived, on ration – imagine the arguments with frustrated customers when a supplier sent rhubarb out in banana boxes.

First Contacts

My first passing contact with Wolverton was in the late sixties. At the time I was in London, working for the BBC, and on my new found wealth (£675pa) I was able to visit family in Birmingham fairly frequently by train. On one such occasion I was treating myself to tea in the restaurant, the waiter was about to refill my tea cup when he stopped pouring and braced himself against a seat, the train shook violently as it passed over points after which he finished filling my cup. Impressed with his premonition I asked how he knew – easy he said –that was Wolverton.

The next one was unknown to me at the time. Early in 1970 I was the proud owner of a 70ft DIY project – a semi converted narrowboat – which I was taking to London down the canal.

The previous week I had the trip thwarted being frozen in on the outskirts of Birmingham. Now it was January, it was raining and there was a strong wind and had been like this since leaving Cosgrove and it stayed like this until well passed Bletchley. This voyage was probably to colour my initial opinions of Milton Keynes not knowing I had skirted Wolverton, the works and New Bradwell.

Having been in the BBC for five years and having reached post of Film Editor, was beginning to find the pattern things repetitive, I jumped at the opportunity of joining the team to work on programmes for The Open University. Originally the operation was based at Alexandra Palace( yes, I was there the day it burnt down). After a brief time I was in a situation that meant that I travelled to Walton Hall, taking junction 14 and driving through Broughton and Milton Keynes Village arriving on a road that is now an overflow of the Open University car parking – no Kents Hill, Monkston or Middleton.

Little Horwood

Arrival in Milton Keynes was a untidy affair.

One of the reasons for coming was my work, with the BBC Open University Production Unit, as a film editor.

Initially I was sharing a house and travelling back to London at week ends. Then a house in Little Horwood was purchased. It was situated opposite to the `Shoulder of Mutton` public house. This was not without its trauma as about two days after moving in I was sitting at the window making a phone call when a car exiting the car park met a car coming around the corner. No deaths or major injuries but the front wall had to be rebuilt (The insurance paid).

When the property had been put up for sale by its owners the then tenants were unable to find the required £600 needed but were at that time still to be found in the pub. The people who did buy it turned it into a double fronted property (as it was end of terrace) and they in sold it so that they could live in a caravan on a plot of land nearby whilst they built a new house from scratch.

Little Horwood was a rarity in that there were few old inhabitants but the new comers helped keep up the local community rather than turn it into a dormitory. One of the old inhabitants lived next door. A widow, Mrs Savage was a fund of tales about life as it had been in the days before the Second World War, when her husband did have to get on his bike to find work. There had been many airfields in Buckinghamshire and one of these was quite close b, although the most obvious is at Finmere, now more famous for its Sunday Market & Car Boot.

The local village traditions were continued with the likes of duck races down the local stream, pig roasts, fetes and even a cross country race. An added excitement was the landlord of the pub jumping the counter and making off with a customer leaving his wife and two sons behind. His sons worked for a blacksmith in Bletchley (Charles Head of Tavistock Street, Bletchley) It is a family business that has moved into a new age –anvils, hammers and forge fires have been replaced by welders, guillotines and the like.

However before he left I was to cause him distress – although he did not know it was me. One of the front windows of the house I was living in overlooked the entrance to the pub car park and a gateway into the field beyond. One morning I was up about 6am and looked through the window coming out of the field at the end of the car park and towards the road. My assumption was that someone had left the gate open and the cows were in danger of becoming steaks on the front of an oncoming vehicle. As a consequence I rushed out and shooed them back towards the field. I was only to discover later that they had come from a farm nearly two miles away. The publican told me he that someone had seen me, but I was not going to admit it as he seemed uptight at the time, probably due to the fact that his garden furniture had come off the worse for wear.

Some twelve months later I found myself living in a 2nd floor council flat in Oldbrook, which had a wonderful view towards the evening sunsets. Today`s tenants only have a view of the flats opposite. A strange move you might say but it was explained, like many of my moves, by affairs of the heart. These however are not for display here.

Three moves later(Via Emerson Valley & Waterside, Peartree Bridge) found me residing at 114, Windsor Street, MK12 5AT. situated on the corner of Western Road. It was an immediate neighbour to “The Top Club” which was the source of much free musical entertainment, wanted or otherwise. One of the more interesting benefits of the top club was lying in bed on a summers evening listening to the late night conversations on a summers evening as people paused on the corner before making their separate ways home.

I got hooked on the idea of an allotment and took one of those between Western Road and Furze Way. As well as being able to compare several different types of potato, it also proved to be a very good way of getting “tennis elbow”. This was actually the one of the worst things that could have happened! The whole property needed refurbishing. Rewired, re-slate the roof (putting roofing felt beneath the slates), rebuild the top of the chimney so that the main downstairs fireplaces could be used, replace the water main, install a gas main, install central heating, new kitchen, new bathroom and make a loft hatch that could accommodate something larger than a dormouse.

One interesting feature of 114 was that the floor joists in the breakfast room were common between 114 and 112. This I discovered was due to the fact that the joists in the breakfast room had suffered rot and a poor repair had been made with the net result that when next door put their coal bucket down, our floor went up and down. Crawling under the floor boards and building brick piers sorted cured this phenomena.

All the explorations, that were necessary for the various works mentioned,showed that 114, Windsor Street was almost a living time capsule. The last owner was the late Mrs West, she and her husband had come to Wolverton during the second world war as he had been given a job at “The Works”. There were a number of items that showed his engineering skills in the cellar, many of these are now in Milton Keynes Museum at Stacey Bushes. An interesting item was a hand made notice on the back of a piece Perspex that read “Gone to the Palace” (One of Wolverton`s cinemas). In the loft were old newspapers, amongst which was one from 1933 with pictures of Nazi officials attending church.

Sadly, of the original features, only a small basket fire place in a bedroom and the rainwater tank, in the what used to be the out house, remained. Mrs West had used the rain water rather than the mains water for tasks such as hair washing. This could not be continued as the traditional arrangement was that all the rain water was fed into the tank, before overflowing into the final down pipe. The years of sediment that had accompanied the rain had blocked the bottom of the tank.

For me one of the nicest features of 114 was the unusual bay window to the rear bedroom. One could sit in the bay and look down the back road, over the works and see the spire of Hanslope church.

Exploration of the back roads and other streets resulted in the discovery of railway carriages serving a second life, a joiner from the works, now making window frames & doors in his garage and other wonders. Some of the houses still sported the (now defunct) original gas lighting and its pipe work. Gradually the older population was dwindling and new people were moving in. The back roads also have the evidence that Wolverton was not a block development, for whilst the street frontages are all very similar, the view from the back road shows the depth of the pockets of the people who owned them which resulted in sizes ranging from modest to qauite large. The land that Wolverton is built on was originally owned by the railway company and sold of in small lots over a period of time. As a result this, most properties have internal design variations with their neighbours. In a way the conservation status that has finally arrived is a good thing but there are many unfortunate “scars” that have been perpetrated over the years.

Not long after moving to 114, I was made redundant from the BBC, but because of my age at the time the severance also included a pension. My wife, who had also been made redundant from the BBC earlier, had little income and the pressures of finance, house restoration and others drove us apart. However being left to sell the house resulted in meeting the Marian to whom I am now happily married. She came to buy a sofa and got more than she bargained for. That however is another story.

The Inland Waterways Association

The IWA was formed by a group of canal enthusiasts in the late 1940`s to help save the nations run down network of canals from dereliction and closure. Fortunately for today`s users they included educated and influential people who knew how beaurocracy and politics work and therefore how to thwart the plans for closures to save money in a near destitute Britain that was having to count the cost of winning the second world war. The IWA has a web site which is a good starting point for those wishing to find out more (www.waterways.org.co.uk/).

There is also a Milton Keynes Branch. I had joined the IWA whilst living in London. I was involved in numerous restoration activities, and found the fellowship rewarding. So it`s no surprise that one of my first ports of call for some social contact was the IWA Milton Keynes branch meetings.

This was 1981 and at that time the meetings were at the “Bull & Butcher”, in Fenny Stratford. It was seemingly early days for the recently formed branch and there were appeals for financial help and offers of cups of tea if one knocked on the secretary`s front door when passing. I passed and knocked and she was very surprised to receive a visit, but I was invited in. This was to be a long association as I ended up on the committee as sales officer, progressed to branch magazine editor and eventually ended up as chairman. June, for that was the lady`s name, was also a good friend and offered me support of the moral variety at times when life was being difficult.

IWA – MK was a young branch but had not let the grass grow under its feet. They applied for and were granted monies from the Urban Aid Scheme, that had been set up by the government of the day, to employ a Canal Side Improvement Officer to maintain and enhance the canal side environment for the benefit of all members of the community. The scheme utilized labour from sources such as Elfreda Rathbone providing supported work experience for disadvantaged people from this and other organisations. Wheel chair access was provided where none had been before, picnic sites created and generally an improvement was to be seen. The most visible is the mural on the off towpath side on the wall below the old railway works. The government funding was for three years which was then taken up by Milton Keynes Borough Council for a further period after which the scheme was taken on board by MKBC in a different form.

One of the main activities of the IWA is to keep itself in the public eye. To this end we approached Milton Keynes Parks Trust for permission to hold a small scale event in Campbell Park, it being central with good road access and the canal runs through it. The request was agreed to and the Parks Trust agreed to supply a mobile toilet unit. The event was successful so we asked if we could repeat the event the next year. The short version is that the answer was no to Campbell Park but if we were prepared to go to Great Linford then the answer would be yes. So came about the basis of the present day “Great Linford Waterside Festival”.

Buckingham Canal Society

Through my IWA activities I became involved in the formation of this society which is dedicated to restoring navigation between Old Stratford and Buckingham. Buckingham played a large political role in the building of the Grand Union Canal through the Marquis of Buckingham Who lived at Stowe , which now houses a “Public School”. To find more out about the Buckingham Canal Society visit the Milton Keynes Heritage site and/or the Library.

Milton Keynes Narrowboats

I arrived in Milton Keynes with a job, a membership of the Inland Waterways Association and a narrowboat.

Through the job I knew a man called Nick Levinson who was lodging with a lady called Deb Cooper to whom I was introduced, as we were both interested in canals.

My interest was boating and Deb's was how to use boats to help young people develop communication skills within a group and grow as individuals. A group of people with similar interests had got together and, with the blessing of their employers, had set up “Milton Keynes Narrowboats”, plus buying the first boat “Life Enabler”.

It was not long before I was involved with the project, an involvement that was to last for several years. The major problem was that as the original people dropped out one by one and for whatever reason they were not replaced by people from the same areas, and most importantly with time available during working hours to devote to the project. These people were replaced by people from the voluntary sector. In the end this situation was to be the death knell of the project as full time administration, promotion and fund raising are essential to achieve full utilization of the organisation. As a halfway stage the boat was handed over to Interaction at Peartree Bridge where it was based. Unfortunately clamping down on educational trips and restrictions imposed by accidents involving minors elsewhere, to say nothing of scarcity of funds, eventually meant that the operation was wound up and the boat sold into the private sector.

This may seem like a gloomy tale but it did have a brighter side giving enjoyment to many youngsters and certainly gave me an insight into the world of benefits, The Manpower Services Commission, Community Programme Workers, when to trust people and when to exercise caution.

People to beware of in particular are planners, politicians and developers.

When Milton Keynes Narrowboats was first started it was moored at the bottom of Interaction`s garden and was administered from a youth centre just the other side of the adjacent bridge. The building had been provided by Bucks County Council in the very early days of Milton Keynes development and was run by Milton Keynes Borough Council.

Along came the proposals for Milton Keynes Marina.

The options included either building around the youth centre or relocating it to a new building to be provided by the developers.

In between times an inspector condemned the building as unsafe. Neither the builders (Bucks County Council) nor the administrators (Milton Keynes Borough Council) could agree on who should pay for rectifying the problems. The end of the story is nothing was done. The youth centre was demolished and no alternative was provided by the developer. The site of the youth club is now a development of houses between interaction and the marina. This is a type of tale that is often repeated across the country.

The building of the marina came about halfway through Milton Keynes Narrowboats history. This coincided with the committee having become almost entirely volunteers and it was obvious that some sort of initiatives were required, in order to maintain its profile and bring in both funds and users. Part of the development was a hotel and public house complex called “The Moorings” (complete with NO MOORING signs outside). We approached the owners and they agreed to sponsor an open day for us, to which we invited a wide range of organisations and local authorities. The mayor attended, even though he was undergoing treatment for cancer, and also Tim Hill as representative of the recently formed Community Trust. As a consequence we applied for a grant to install lifts to allow access to people with mobility problems. We were successful in our application and many people benefited. There was even a trip to Manchester for a Rally organised by “The Community Boats Association” with a contingent from The Neath Hill “Scope” Community.

An almost scoop was a front page on a local paper advertising “ Canal Boat Santa” however it was not to be as the mangled remains of a fatal car crash were deemed to be much more news worthy.

It is Milton Keynes loss that it does not have a community boat anymore and hopefully there will be a time when another can be introduced. There is plenty of information on the net. Put "community boats association" into a search engine or try National community boat association