Chimneys: The Ups... And Downs (10 December 1976)

For the past few years, residents of West Bletchley have had a good laugh at the very idea of becoming a smoke control area.

They have pointed upwards to the reeking chimneys of the LBC brickworks and have said:  “What? Stop our small domestic fires when almost next door we have those huge chimneys spewing smoke and fumes all over us?  Come off it!”

Well, now it has happened.  They have received notice from the borough council that after a certain date smoky domestic chimneys will not be allowed.

So judge their interest when the other Saturday morning they heard a heavy roar and went to their doors to find that simultaneously no fewer than six of the chimneys had been sent crashing to the ground.

Was this a well-timed token gesture?  Or just an odd coincidence?  I do not know.  I only ask, as the rabbit said.

Talking about chimneys, did you see that the development corporation are to build 22 “executive-type” houses which will have them?  I was filled with astonished puzzlement.  To me it sounded like proudly announcing that the houses would have doors.

I had not realised until then that of all the thousands of houses, flats and other dwellings put up by the corporation, not one had a chimney.

Presumably they are all all-electric.  Whatever will the folks do for keeping warm and cooking, if the electricity goes off this winter?

Every dwelling should have both electricity and gas laid on.  Or be declared unfit for human habitation.  I would think not twice, but three or four times before moving into a place that did not have both, be the electricity as cheap as peanuts and the gas as dear as gold.

Gas is the older form of heating and lighting.  In fact, the Fenny Stratford Gas company was one of the oldest such companies in the United Kingdom, being founded in 1857 and providing street lighting that year.   Yet, old as it is, gas is still better than electricity for some purposes, in my opinion.  But it does imply a chimney or some other form of flue.

The chimneys on the executive houses are intended for open fires, but there will also be some form of central heating.  Some jester has invented a new town for that area – KINDLEton.   Let us hope that doesn’t turn out to be the whole truth about it sometime.

Talking about winter, I note that Sir Walter Perry, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, first visited this district on a wild and wintry day and that “North Buckinghamshire is not attractive in such conditions.”

Well, well.  I would like to know any outdoor place that is.  Certainly Central London is not.  I have been as cold there as in any place in the Kingdom.  The only difference is the greater facility for getting indoors in London.

When I came to live here, back in 1946, I was mistakenly told that Bletchley meant “Bleak-ley.”   I soon found out that it didn’t, though I admit at times “Bleak-ley” would be a fair description.

I guess that North Bucks just sounds cold to unmuffled ears.  But we must remember that it is not the North Pole – there are quite a number of degrees of latitude and temperature between, in addition to those distributed from Walton Hall.  I must add, however, that this district, in its present state of development, both looks colder and feels colder than it did when more of it was just green fields, hedges and winding lanes.

Sir Walter also reports Lord Goodman as saying of the university’s move to these parts:  “You will have nothing to do here except commune with the pigs.”

Goodman for centuries has been an honoured name within the bounds of what is now the Borough of Milton Keynes.  At the time of the Oath of Allegiance during the Jacobite troubles there were no fewer than 22 property-owning Goodmans here, and only one or two in all the rest of Buckinghamshire.  They even out-numbered the property-owning Smiths, who could muster only 14 here.

So I wonder if Sir Walter knew all this as, taking Lord Goodman’s advice, he scratched the back of the nearest pig while contemplating his future job of making silk purses out of sows’ ears?

But seriously, I am glad the university is based here.  Socially and in the arts the staff are doing a lot for the borough.  But perhaps the benefit has not been all one-way.  For instance, I am told that before the university ever went on the air, its lectures were tried out on groups of students at the Bletchley Park Teacher-Training College and were subsequently improved as a result of that experience.