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
Kevin Wilson was born in Preston, and lived there until going to university and teacher training college. He recalls that during Geography A-level he did a project about new towns and became very interested in the subject; a visiting lecturer came from Milton Keynes to talk about ‘city of a million trees’. Having qualified as ...
Born and educated in Barnet, London, Dick left school at 16, feeling that he would like to do ‘something with an end product, like engineering’, and he began a three-year engineering apprenticeship with Barnet Council, later moving to Wembley, where from 1965 he began to move into drainage work. In 1968 he saw an advert ...
Chris was born in Bristol and first became interested in architecture at grammar school. After visits to several university/college options, he applied to the Architectural Association (AA), and received an offer from them at the end of a summer travelling in Europe. He comments that AA was very ‘open-spirited’; several AA graduates came to MKDC. ...
Christopher was born in Southsea, Hants. At grammar school he studied science subjects and his idea of being an architect emerged quite late in his school days. He says: ‘the school library…had a copy of Le Corbusier’s book, The Modular, which struck a chord with me’. The local authority agreed to fund him to study ...
Mike Dean was born in North London. He was interested in model making, and good at maths, but left school when he aged 16. His father suggested quantity surveying and Mike started work as a junior in an office in Holborn, finding that the role suited his abilities. He explains the role of the quantity ...
Cynthia, born in Baldock, Herts, left secondary modern school at 15. Following her passion to draw, she trained and worked as a technical illustrator, then moved into the arts, spending some time in India, studying at Hornsey College of Art, & returning to India to develop the Gallery Camuld in Calcutta. Returning to England after ...
Born in Sevenoaks, David Lock studied Town Planning at Nottingham College of Art and Design, one of the first generations of full-time undergraduate level town planning students. After graduation, he worked in Leicester City Council as a Development Control Officer: there he also e became NALGO Deputy Branch Secretary. In 1973, David joined the Town ...
John Walker grew up in Manchester and studied Maths at Liverpool University. Following up a suggestion to try town planning, he applied to Trent Polytechnic for a graduate planning course from 1970 to 1972. He found the subjects new and interesting: ‘…the idea of locations and spaces and how urban areas worked and … the ...
Nigel Lane was born in Hampstead Garden Suburb, the New Town founded by Dame Henrietta Barnett, with low density housing, wide roads with trees, ‘… not unlike Milton Keynes in many ways’. His father was Chief City Planner for the LCC so Nigel visited many new towns with him. At Haberdashers Askes school his skill ...
Stuart was born in Bradford, Yorkshire just before WW2 and attended the local boys grammar. Having decided to try architecture, he joined a local practice for experience (including some work with Derek Walker in 1958/59), then applied to the Architectural Association (AA) for their four-year diploma, obtaining grants for his studies. He found the studies ...
Born in Newcastle, Clive left school aged 14 and worked as an office boy at a solicitor’s firm. After a year, he had a serious accident and had one leg amputated, but continued to work there, so that he could become a solicitor. The expense of buying into a firm and taking articles was beyond ...
Will, an architect and planner, was appointed to Milton Keynes Development Corporation in 1978 and in the early 1980s began working on plans for individual grid squares. In 1986 he left MKDC for a post with the London Docklands Development Corporation, where he was involved in Wapping Lighthouse and Canary Wharf. In August 1990 he ...
Wayne is a Lancastrian, from Warrington. He studied economics at Lancaster University, having been advised at school that ‘economists would get all the best jobs’, but had ‘always had an interest in transport …everything that moved interested me’. After University Wayne returned home, played rugby and did manual work while waiting for a ‘proper ...
Born in Angmering, Sussex, Don was educated at Chichester High School, leaving to become an articled clerk to a Sussex chartered surveyor. The property business was booming in the 1950s, which led him to choose the profession. His articles gave him a wide range of experience and he studied for exams by correspondence course, qualifying ...
Henry Cleary was appointed as Principal in the New Towns Division of the Government Department of the Environment (DoE) in 1983 and served there until 1986. This Division ‘sponsored’ the New Towns, and Henry’s area of responsibility covered Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Telford.
Pete Marland was born in Burnley and grew up in Bacup, educated at the local grammar school. He declined an Oxbridge place and studied politics at Liverpool University. Given Labour Party membership by his family as a birthday present aged 14, he wasn’t actually active in politics at that time. Moving briefly to Gloucestershire after ...
Born in Watford, Jim Barnes left school at 16, to train at a London firm of quantity surveyors. Following qualification, he worked in Watford and Slough and was thepleased to get a job in 1960 with Henry Cooper & Sons, reputed to be the oldest established firm of quantity surveyors in the world. As partof ...
Tod was born in Northampton: ‘ born and bred to be in the circus’. His family can trace their history to Buffalo Bill = William Frederick Cody in the USA. During the 1950s/1960s, their travelling circus winter quarters were at the ex-Black Horse Cafe & filling station, on Watling Street, now part of MK. Tod ...
Born in Maidenhead and educated at boarding school in Reading and Marlow, Digby was articled to a Municipal Engineer at Harpenden Council & qualified in 1954. He then moved to a job in Hemel Hempstead Development Corporation in 1955. A few years on, inspired to move abroad, he applied for a job in Bulawayo, Rhodesia ...
Jock Campbell had a highly successful business career, starting in his family’s business and culminating in his Chairmanship of Booker McConnell. He decided to retire early from this post, and in 1967 was chosen to be Chairman of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) Board and appointed in April 1967.
Steve Fuller was born in East Kent and educated at Kent College in Canterbury. After his first degree in geography at University College London, he worked in Canada for a year, then back in the UK for Nielsen’s market research company Colleagues there inspired in him an interest in town planning and he took a ...
Lee Shostak recalls hearing team leader John De Monchaux, from the master planers of MK (Llewellyn Davies, Weeks, Forrester and Walter Bor), giving a lecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in early 1970; he talked of Milton Keynes (MK) among other subjects. At this time Lee was studying at Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) ...
Peter Martin grew up in the South East of England and studied at Oxford School of Architecture (now Oxford Brookes University) for six years, leaving in 1970. After four years working in a small London architects’ practice, an old friend suggested Peter came up to Milton Keynes for an interview with the Development Corporation (MKDC). ...
Roger was born in Southampton post-war. Following a talk in the sixth form about a dwarfish race in Las Hardes, Spain, Roger and some friends were successful in gaining a Ford travelling scholarship to spend six weeks in Las Hardes and wrote a report about both the geographical and sociological aspects. Following advice from Morris ...
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