Interview with Trevor Denton (part 1)

Trevor describes his education and early training in architecture, in Leeds and then at the Architectural Association (AA). He talks of AA influence on him and on MK: ‘I think Milton Keynes was heavily influenced by people who were all at the AA …in the early sixties and most of them were qualifying in ’62 or ’63’. He notes that: ‘…the mood at the time was that architecture was about making people healthy and happy’. Before his move to Milton Keynes, Trevor was working for Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall (YRM) on the construction of the Alcan aluminium smelter in Northumberland: ‘… at that time, it was the biggest building project in the country’. Trevor had known Stuart Mosscrop at AA, and his name was mentioned to Derek Walker: Derek recruited him to MKDC in about 1971. Initially he was disappointed to hear that he was to work on housing, rather than interesting buildings. However, his first project was the sewage works. He says: ‘…It was a joy to do…The geometry was something which interested me and stemmed originally from the layout of the plant’. He recalls Peter Waterman’s intervention to move the plant nearer to the motorway.

After about two years’ work on housing, Trevor joined the CMK team, in charge of Central Area Housing, working first to produce a structure plan. He notes: ‘All the housing was public and …the mechanism for funding public housing was wholly inappropriate to building a low density city …It was absurd. It never changed’. He describes the structure plan for Fishermead and explains that the aim of the layout was to mix cars and people safely in the streets and to create safe places for children to play.’ Because we were working on public housing, Trevor says: ‘there was control of the façade’, but he comments that the ‘right to buy’ has led to many changes to individual properties. Problems with Fishermead were the expensive heating and flat roofs. Trevor says: ‘Flat roofs were …a stylistic thing, I have to admit, just as I suppose parapets on Georgian houses were; …a horizontal line around a London square united the whole development’.

They discuss the contrast between Fishermead and Springfield, with its two-storey houses which were almost urban cottages, with a wider frontage. There the aim was that you would be more aware of greenery than buildings: ‘So the houses were set back’. He comments that Springfield’s situation on a hill by the canal ‘animated it’. They also discuss the brick colours used in the different housing schemes and the reasons for the choices made.