Milton Keynes People Collection
In January 2017, Milton Keynes celebrated its 50th Birthday. The new town was born with an Act of Parliament in 1967 which approved the creation of a Development Corporation to build a new community of 250,000 people covering 21,869 acres of Buckinghamshire farmland and villages. Living Archive MK used this anniversary as a focus to capture the stories and memories of Milton Keynes people, from original residents to early pioneers and the newly arrived. The MK People section of the project was initiated by Lee Shostak, former Planning Director of Milton Keynes Development who was researching a book telling the story of the Development Corporation’s work, and Roger Kitchen, Chair of LAMK, and himself formerly employed as a community worker by the Development Corporation.
Milton Keynes People comprises interviews with employees of Milton Keynes Development Corporation and other Milton Keynes people who were involved in the development of the new city. Each interview is preceded by a short biography of the interviewee and some interviews are accompanied by documents or images they have provided, related to their work in Milton Keynes; some interviewees have also provided transcripts of talks they have given.
Extent
50 Audio Visual interviews, some with photographs and documents
Reference number
MKP
Storage location
Digital
Records in this Collection
Ben was born in Manchester; his family moved to Rotherham where he won a scholarship for the Grammar School. A ‘safe job’ was then in the local authority, aiming for Accountancy qualifications. In World War II he joined Local Defence Volunteers and recalls some frightening night duty shifts. Subsequently in the RAF Volunteer Reserve, he ...
Brian Berrett (known as Bill) was born in Birmingham. After Grammar School and an apprenticeship at Crewe Locomotive Works, he moved to work in a local architects’ office. He studied at Birmingham School of Architecture 1950-1955 and then worked for 6 years in Coventry’s Planning Department on the city’s redevelopment. Following a brief period working ...
Brian was born in Cardiff; his father was an engineer. After a Grammar School education Brian was apprenticed to an engineer at The British Electricity Authority; but after six months, they all decided this was not for him! So he worked for the local authority, before National Service. After this, the authority offered him a ...
Born in suburban North London, Brian graduated in forestry at Oxford. He then worked on the Lower Swansea Valley Project to combat industrial pollution of air and land. Success in this led to his recruitment to Runcorn New Town as forestry officer: the General Manager (Mr Banwell) wanted to plant lots of trees in what ...
Born in Ealing, Chris was educated at Ealing Grammar School, then qualified as a quantity surveyor on a course at Hammersmith School of Building, Arts and Crafts. Called up for national service, he took officer training in Airfield Construction, on the Isle of Man. Next he was posted to Abingdon (not the Far East as ...
Don was born in Bolton; on leaving school he was articled to a Manchester architect, and took an 8 year part-time course, linked with the Regional College of Art at Manchester. After working at Lancashire County Council, he chose to do town planning and took a town planning degree at the University of Manchester. When ...
John was born in Portsmouth. He attributes his building career to spending a lot of time aged 5 or 6, watching builders rebuild the bomb-damaged city. After Grammar School he took an apprenticeship, with the city engineer of Portsmouth, learning everything about managing a city, from digging sewers and tram tracks, laying kerbs, housing and ...
John grew up in Wakefield and Bradford and studied civil engineering at Leeds University. Initially he worked on contracts for housing and flats and then joined George Wimpey’s to work on the M1. In the coldest winter (1962-3) he was out on site, building a concrete batching plant, and transporting gravel and sand to a ...
Ken Baker had worked for a while at Smithsons Architects in Kensington, with Chris Woodward. Stuart Mosscrop, who had known Chris at AA (the Architectural Association), had been employed by Derek Walker to be the architect for Central Milton Keynes (CMK), and invited Chris (who by then had left Smithsons) to join his team. Chris ...
In the 1960s, Margaret Durbridge, who had moved into the North Buckinghamshire area in 1936, was a local J.P. and Newport Pagnell District Councillor. In 1967 she was elected to Buckinghamshire County Council and was involved with educational matters in the county. She was appointed a member of the first Board of Milton Keynes Development ...
As a child, Neil was evacuated to Madeley Heath in WWII and enjoyed a lot of freedom during that period. He returned to secondary school in Newcastle after the war, gaining A levels and developing an interest in landscape and environment. Inspired by a book on planning and environmental design by McAllister, he decided that ...
Peter was born in Tunbridge Wells, then the family moved to Medway Towns. At the time of Dunkirk the children were evacuated to South Wales for 2 years, so his young life was full of interesting periods of change and adjustment to new people. In Medway Towns, he attended Rochester Grammar School, then did two ...
Ralph Willcox was born in Barwell, Leicestershire, his father was a shoemaker. Educated at an intermediate school for technically orientated pupils, he planned an engineering career, like his brothers. However, disenchanted with his first job, he then spent 5 years in the RAF before demob and marriage. While in Aden with the RAF, he had ...
Born in Bridgend, Steve attended Bridgend Grammar, and then the Polytechnic of Wales for a degree level course in what was called Urban Estate Management (basically Chartered Surveying). This gave him a degree plus exemption from the RICS exams. He became a Chartered Surveyor after two further years employment. He started work in local government, ...
Tony was educated at Grammar School in Chesterfield. He left school at 16, ended up by chance working in the office of the Housing Department in Chesterfield, and has continued in in a housing career. His first job taught him that housing departments deal with people and that was what he enjoyed. Two years later, ...
Born in Northampton, Frank first worked in the Northampton County Architects Department before National Service. He then moved to the new quantity surveying section and studied by distance learning for RICS exams. In 1953 worked in Coventry on rebuilding the city after wartime bombing; the city was expanding massively with many engineering businesses. Given responsibility ...
Allen worked in both Hounslow and Bracknell New Town as a junior commercial surveyor, responsible for development of town centre property. He felt that there were opportunities in Bracknell which weren’t being exploited, and saw decisions made on the town centre layout there that puzzled him. He attended an event addressed by Alan Ashton, newly ...
Born in Brixton post-war, Jacky remembers freedom to go out and play on bombsites, also her large Irish family parties where her father played piano. He was a craft baker and became production manager of the largest factory bakery in England – Nevill’s, in Acton and the family moved to one of the very first ...
Dennis was born in a village near Canterbury, son of a local house builder. His first job was as Junior Tracer and Clerk at the local Rural District Council; then he took three years articles with an architect in Canterbury, which was followed by his National Service (until 1954) in the RAF as an Architectural ...
Bill’s great-great grandfather had worked at Wolverton Railway Works, his father leaving to sign up for the WW II. Bill was born in Old Stratford and they then moved to Stony Stratford, where his mother (born in Canada) took over Bill’s grandmother’s draper’s shop. Bill attended the secondary technical college at Wolverton for three years, ...
Michael Murray was born in Warrington, Lancashire. Educated at a Catholic Secondary school, he then studied Law at Manchester University and acknowledges excellent funding support from both the Church and Warrington Borough Council. He took articles in a private practice in Wigan for two years to qualify as a Solicitor. In 1969 Michael began working ...
Bob Hill was born in Birmingham, and in the late 1960s he was working in London in the Civil Service in 1972 as a Surveyor. When he saw the adverts for building a new city in the middle of Buckinghamshire, he just liked the sound of the job, even though it was not well described. ...
Sam Crooks was born in Belfast and notes that the politics of an area affects the way you look at things. He came to the UK to study history and education at university and then moved to Milton Keynes in 1970 to work at the Open University (he was interviewed by Joe Clinch). Being ...
Born in North London, John Caplin is the son of a chemist and businessman who started to pioneer the prospect of reprocessing plastics, after he returned from the RAF. (The family is believed to originate from Latvia, coming to the East End as immigrant Jewish tailors). Mr Caplin senior devised a very simple machine to ...
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