The New Town was designated in 1967 and deliberately located roughly equidistant between London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford and Cambridge so that it would be self sustaining and become a major regional centre in its own right.  Milton Keynes is the largest of the so-called "new towns" built during the 1960s to allow for urban expansion in the southeast of England. When Milton Keynes was designated, some 60,000 people lived in what is now the Borough.

Design and planning was delegated to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (Chair: Lord Campbell of Easkan; CEO Fred Lloyd Roche). Their strongly post-modernist designs featured regularly in the magazines Architectural Design and the Architects' Journal. Regrettably, the Government wound up MKDC in the early 80s, transferring control to the very much less imaginative English Partnerships. Design guidance was weakened and subsequent built environment developments are barely distinguishable from the anonymous suburbs of other towns and cities around the UK. Conversely, the "river valleys, water courses and extensive landscape buffers within Milton Keynes provide a good example of how environmental assets can be integrated into new development." (MK&SM Study). Fortunately, the superb organic environment is under control of the Parks Trust and continues to be one of the major attractions to living in the town.

The New Town encompassed a landscape that has a rich historic legacy. The CLUTCH Club Milton Keynes site holds a collection of archival photos and recorded interviews compiled by residents of the older villages incorporated within Milton Keynes. Larger MK-related historical collections have been created at The Living Archive, and a broader family of sites and links to archeological studies of Milton Keynes is maintained by the Milton Keynes Heritage Association, which "exists to encourage and develop co-operation and co-ordination between all members having an interest in heritage within the Milton Keynes district.

This page was last updated: 12 September 2005

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL