Milton Keynes and its place within new towns history

Dr Katrina NavickasUniversity of Hertfordshire

‘old’ towns – they were ‘new’ once

Roman town of Silchesterhttp://www.wikiwand.com/en/Calleva_Atrebatum

Winchelsea, founded under Edward Ihttp://www.winchelsea.net/

A brief history of new towns

Factory towns: New Lanark (1786)

Utopian experiments• Owenite socialist communities

– New Harmony, Indiana, (1823-5), Kendal, Ohio (1826-9)

• Chartist Land Plan settlements, 1846-52 – e.g. O’Connorville (Heronsgate), Hertfordshire; Charterville (Minster Lovell), Oxfordshire

Factory towns: Saltaire (1851)

Factory towns: Port Sunlight (1888)

Garden City movement (1898-)

Early 20th century

• London County Council – slum clearance & planned communities since the 1890s

• Garden city movement – soon popular in USA and Australia – e.g. Garden City, Port Melbourne (1920)

• New technologies spark new factory cities – e.g. Fordlandia, Brazil (1928- failed in 1934)

New Towns Committee (1945-6)• “promotion of New Towns in furtherance of a

policy of planned decentralisation from congested urban areas … such Towns should be established and developed as self-contained and balanced communities for work and living.”

‘Charley in New Town’, Central Office of Information for Ministry of Town and Country Planning, 1948

New Towns Committee and Act (1945-46)

• Frederic Osborn, key figure in Welwyn Garden City, served on the committee

• Called for each new town to be zoned, with a central area, residential areas designed to the American neighbourhood unit principle, and an industrial zone

• 20 ‘Mark 1’ towns: including 8 in London hinterland: Basildon, Harlow, Crawley, Bracknell, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, and expanded WGC

• Only 1 new town built in 1950s – Cumbernauld, Scotland

‘urban renewal’ programme in the 1960s

• ‘Mark 2’ towns – Skelmersdale, Livingstone, Redditch, Runcorn and Washington.

• ‘Mark 3’ towns under Wilson’s government - 1965 New Towns Act – Milton Keynes, Northampton, Telford, Peterborough.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/sixties-britain/map-new-towns/

Planning Milton Kenyes• 1967 Milton Keynes Development Corporation –

consultant team of Llewelyn-Davies, Weeks, Forestier-Walker, Bor.

• Very influenced by California urban theorist Melvin Webber as well as Garden City ideals – Webber: technology allows decentralization; ‘place-free’ and ‘stretched-out’ communities

• Strongly modernist design to buildings• Idea of a city in the forest – green space and low rise• Grid layout for streets with roundabouts integrating

existing villages within the system – mix of old and new

International context – postwar new towns across the world

Including:• Nowa Huta, Poland (1949)• Electrenai, Lithuania (1961)• Reston, Virginia, USA (1964)• Columbia, Maryland, USA (1967)

• Index at http://www.newtowninstitute.org/newtowndata/index.php

Researching old towns in England

• English place name society • Victoria County History• Historical trade directories • Maps and tithe maps• Census and parish records

Researching new towns – how different from researching ‘old’ towns?

• Management of the city through a Development Corporation – different type of organisation and archives

• Archives likely still to be with councils rather than in record offices

• Data protection and people still alive! – hence census not available – but other types of sources e.g. oral history archives

Key issues relating to new towns history

• Urban dispersal – political and economic reasons

• Urban planning and policy• Migration• ‘new town blues’ – issues of isolation• ‘old town’ versus ‘incomers’• Gender, class and ethnic make-up and changes

over time

Topics to cover and what sources to choose

Urban planning

Development Corporation documents; architects’ drawings

Political history

Government legislation; Election results; newspapers

Social and

cultural history

Newspapers, magazines, pamphlets; documentaries

People’s history

Oral interviews, community archives

Key questions to ask of your sources

• The 6 ‘w’s:1. What is it?2. Who made it?3. When was it made?4. Why was it made?5. What audience did it have?6. What does it tell us about the bigger story?

sources• MK digitised archives and catalogue - https://

ehive.com/collections/4535/milton-keynes-city-discovery-centre

• People’s History of Milton Keynes oral histories• Talking New Towns project – Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead,

Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City - http://www.talkingnewtowns.org.uk/

• British Newspaper Archive (subscription needed – or access at the British Library)

• local libraries, MK Discovery Centre, and Bucks Archives for local newspapers, maps, literature

• RIBA library • BFI film archive for public information films and documentaries

Further reading• Mark Clapson, new ed., Milton Keynes Development

Corporation, The Plan for Milton Keynes (Taylor & Francis, 2013)

• Mark Clapson, Invincible Green Suburbs, brave new towns: social change and urban dispersal in postwar England (Manchester University Press, 1998)

• Frederick Osborn and Arnold Whittick, New Towns: their origins, achievements and progress (Leonard Hill, 1977)

• Rosemary Wakeman, Practising Utopia (University of Chicago Press, 2016)

• David Kynaston, Modernity Britain: A Shake of the Dice, 1959-62 (Bloomsbury, 2014)