Interview with Margaret Durbridge

Margaret Durbridge, as a member of the MKDC Board, recalls the early stages of planning in the 1960s and her interest in the infrastructure matters, about which she knew nothing. She recalls several Board members, including herself, Jack Tasker and Peter Waterman, visiting the tunnels that were being dug for the new drains: ‘… I was very lucky because I went down in the bucket and up in the bucket. Some of the others had to climb a ladder…They showed us the sort of rock they had to get through… it caused an awful lot of problems’. She recalls issues before the Board: transport, roads, social provision, etc. After the three year planning/discussion phase, Margaret remembers pressure from the Department of the Environment to build, saying: ‘they got frightfully stroppy’. This led to early estates like Beanhill using prefabricated buildings for speed. She recalls: ‘the financial juggling with the Treasury was unbelievable’. Margaret recalls the drafting of the Master Plan with Llewellyn Davies as consultants; the Board was advised by ‘social scientists, transport experts, whizz kids from America, drainage experts’ and she says: ‘I learnt an enormous amount in that time.’ They wished to retain as much of the history of the area as possible, such as Stony Stratford High Street, Linford Manor. Margaret discusses the problems for local farmers whose land was compulsorily purchased. She notes that the arrival of MK has led to a social revolution and many more opportunities for young people. Margaret’s main area of interest is education; she discusses how they reached the decision to opt for comprehensive education in the north of Buckinghamshire in the 1960s. In Margaret’s opinion: ‘nowadays: in education most people are being taught to think for themselves’. She recalls incidents in the early days of Stantonbury Campus (where she was Chairman of Governors) under Geoff Cooksey, with his new ideas: ‘it was a bit of a revolution… everyone was on Christian name terms’. At the end of the interview, Margaret comments that ‘Milton Keynes is a hobby horse of mine. …We have been extremely lucky to get involved in it’.