Interview with Don Ritson

In the early 1970s, Fred Roche asked Don to come to Milton Keynes as a Housing Architect; he accepted ‘without hesitation’. He found the MK Master Plan ‘stunningly attractive’ and was excited at the opportunity to ‘do things differently,’ as he had done in Halton Brow in Runcorn, working with Neil Higson. Don notes that he had no input into the design of Netherfield, Beanhill, etc.: he says ‘Derek Walker had had total control’ of them. Don was later put in charge of the Southern housing team. There were conflicts between architects and other departments, but Don agrees that some of the architect-driven promotions, like the 1972 exhibition at the Design Centre, were very valuable in attracting industry. Don comments that ‘Derek Walker saw housing on a grand scale, in long terraces’; in Don’s opinion ‘social housing is more higgledy-piggledy …the monolithic type of architecture has never really been popular with the English’.

In about 1975 Don was appointed Director of Planning, Social Development and Information. He also had an extra ‘department of silly ideas …which is how we got the Buddhist monks to build the Peace Pagoda at Willen’. Don considers the great strengths of Milton Keynes to be grid roads, the mix of private and public housing, and the landscape, the idea of the city of trees initiated by Fred after a trip to Finland. But he says ‘Neil Higson …was the man who, for me, made Milton Keynes’. They discuss the stress that MK put on Chief Officers; ‘there was a commitment to work late…in a way, it was loyalty to people like Fred’. Also, Don recalls that at one time MKDC could not keep up with industry’s need for employees’ housing. Don describes his involvement in the placing of the concrete cows in a field by the railway line, which led to huge publicity for MK. Other topics covered are the Shopping building, the idea of shared ownership housing, and Jock Campbell, whom Don describes as ‘a magnificent man …He had immense influence’. Overall Don thinks MK a great success: ‘I’m proud to have been a tiny part of it’. The Peace Pagoda at Willen is, he says: ‘a special place’ for him’.