Interview with Henry Diamond

Henry Diamond qualified at the Royal Agricultural College as an RICS rural practice surveyor. Opportunities in Milton Keynes appealed to him, since he had been brought up in a new town, Welwyn Garden City, and he was appointed Assistant Land Agent in January 1971, to manage the agricultural estates already bought by MKDC. The job developed into acquiring all the land for the development: ‘a huge acquisition programme… about 18,000 acres of land’, both large estates and individual farms. The land for a particular area needed to be bought at least two years in advance of the development starting. Henry recalls the regular liaison meetings with the NFU Steering Committee, who advised tenants and owners of the farmland. He describes some of the reactions of farmers to the acquisition; in general MKDC built decent relationships with them; only a few cases required compulsory purchase orders. Farmers were kept informed by the NFU about what would happen to their land; a code for acquisitions and compensation was followed. Also it was important to manage the land to get best value from the crops before development: ‘on several occasions… a crop came off and literally two days later in went the bulldozers’.

Henry recalls that there were three or four occupiers on the land where CMK was built; the last crop off the land under Lloyds Court was wheat; he and a colleague had to burn off the straw. He recalls some of the farmers: George Cook, Mike Fountain, the Fullers. A typical farmer’s comment was: ‘What the bloody hell do you want to build Central Milton Keynes up here for? The last time anybody lived here was in the Iron Age’. The land was very exposed and Henry questioned whether it was the right place for the city centre. He remembers other attractive areas of the MK designated area before the development: a gated drover’s trail which ran from Milton Keynes Village to Willen, now under Willen Lake; and wild areas at Cold Harbour towards the A5.

Henry still lives in Milton Keynes. He says of his work at MKDC: ‘I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. Those thirteen years I did at the Corporation were amazing years because you were doing something completely unique. …A fantastic team, Jock Campbell and Fred Roche at the helm’. In his opinion CMK has stood the test of time. He comments on current proposals for change in CMK, accepting that change will occur, but not convinced about increased density and moving car parks to the edge: ‘if this pressure for ever higher density in Central Milton Keynes is not matched by a real attempt to tackle how people are going to move about the place then I think it could come undone’.