Your memories...
Emma: "I actually remember the excitement of Macdonalds and my mum taking me there so she could let me try Root Beer that she had last enjoyed when she spent her teen years growing up in America! Funny the things that stick in your mind... and of course visiting good old C&A."
Lisa: "I remember it well! I remember walking around a clean and spacious glass green house with shops. It was amazing to get in there for the first time especially as we had been watching it grow from the ground!"
Colin: "I recorded video in there for inclusion in the 'Campbell's Kingdom' programme for Channel 4 about a month before it was open to the public in 1979. Does anybody remember the 'Shopping as it should be' song that was available to buy and which seemed to play on a loop on the centre when it opened!"
Antonia: "I was born on the day the centre opened. And the 'new end' (Midsummer Place) opened on my 21st birthday!"
Tracie: "You used to get an old green double decker bus past the centre, buses went both sides in those days. And of course the parking was free. I remember McDonalds milkshake for the first time and not being able to finish one because they were so filling!! Mind you in those days they really did taste of chocolate."
Robin: "I remember Au Bon Pain, but only being able to get their freshly baked croissants, pain de chocolats and/or French Loaves after 10.00am, because the centre didn't open till then, which was a bit late for petit dejuener!"
Jane: " I miss George Ort's, and the two supermarkets at one end (Budgen and Waitrose possibly) where I would go first thing on Saturday morning and come home with fresh bread and cheese. As for there not being any doors, that was the idea as it was our city centre, and there was an outcry when they decided they had to put doors on. I had some sympathy. Some days it was like a wind tunnel in there. I remember being told that because the centre was on a hill it was the highest point coming east to west from the Urals. Or in other words, we were feeling the chill from the Russian steppes. No idea if that was true or not."
Hannah: "We used to go to George Ort's opposite Bejams. Ahhh and then there was my first entrupenarial adventure of taking peoples trollies back for 10p."
Margo: "Remember the indoor market? It had very smelly fish and cheese stalls! I loved looking round Habitat and Chelsea Girl on a Saturday and buying singles from Woolies."
Simon: "Budgens, next to Dickens and Jones with Waitrose in the opposite corner, two pubs, a bakers, a shop that roasted it's own coffee, a shop that sold nuts, fruit etc, a proper sweet shop, homebrew shop, coin and stamp shop, two toy shops... It was actually like the song said! I'd never seen anything like it, Central Milton Keynes..."
Soraya: "The proper greasy spoon cafe that used to be a few doors down from where McDonalds is... and don't forget the little 'specialist' arty/crafty shops in the middle bit. I used to have a stall on the original Thursday 'Antique Market'; you could buy allsorts then, from furniture to fur coats!"
Nikki: "I really remember it opening, and how slidey the floor was! Me and my brother used to skid along the floor and hide inside the pillars between each shop and jump out on my mum. Also remember the indoor market, the fab market on a Thursday, the bouncy see-saw thingies out the back or Dickens and Jones and buying massive sandwiches at the sandwich bar in Woolies. Happy days!"
