Milton Keynes (a long read)
Milton Keynes is not Los Angeles. Believe it or not, the comparison is as old as the town itself. The Times drew it in a 1970 editorial, as did even some of the original planners. True, both are essentially sprawling, endlessly repeatable grids; a sublation of the sub- and the urban. But the notion they are both polycentric anti-places is spoilt by Milton Keynes’ unabashed town centre.
MK was planned in a way LA never was. The latter, for example, is famously hostile to pedestrians. Not so the former. When I requested a tour on foot from my native friend, I expected to be told you saw Milton Keynes by car or not at all. Instead, he said he always walked everywhere. That was the idea.
Milton Keynes is not Alphaville either. The buildings in Jean-Luc Godard’s film might be rectangular glass and steel, but their sinister quality derive from inhumane height. Milton Keynes is resolutely, ideologically low-rise. No building was supposed to be taller than a mature tree. It’s not that kind of modernism.
Milton Keyes is not even a city. Countless signs may say otherwise. It may have been planned as such, with comparable population, and applied for the coveted status when possible. It may even have gone to the trouble to steal a Football Club from the capital. But that doesn’t change what it is — a New Town.
That’s not to say Milton Keynes is Stevenage, Harlow, or any of the others. Began in 1967 and not completed until the 1980s, it represents the final, ‘third wave’ of these planning experiments. The story goes that by then well intentioned, post-war paternalism was out and freedom of choice was in — a freedom mimetically written into its structure, featuring a matrix of roads and roundabouts as nodes of open-ended possibility. That’s a romanticised view, but Milton Keynes still isn’t its forebears. From the beginning half of the homes were for private ownership, and there’s certainly no twee ‘Festival of Britain style’ in sight.
But Milton Keynes is space-age. It is gloriously modernist, high-tech, irreverent towards tradition and ultimately unique.
Yet you won’t find it in The Rough Guide to Great Britain. Milton Keynes has a reputation for having nothing to do, as if the usual parochial two-roomed museum and decent cake shop are the real reason pages are given over to cutsie Albion towns rather than taste, or lack thereof in the readership. Discarding my copy of the book from my bag, I felt proving Penguin Random House wrong would be easy.
We started on the outskirts in Bletchley, where my friend’s family home is. It’s best to begin as much as possible from the perspective of a resident not a tourist. Bletchley was one of the pre-existing villages slotted into the grid along with Stony Stratford and Wolverton. My host’s parents affectionately retold stories of life in a changing landscape, but also revealed the double resentment felt here. First, redevelopments such as the black box Brunel Centre “ruined” old Bletchley to provide a stop-gap shopping destination before the New Town got going. Stony Stratford, in comparison, still earns envy for being allowed to retain its “charm” (code for property values). Then, once John Lewis opened in Milton Keynes Centre, the stop-gap went to rot. Even the fast trains to London stopped. Bletchley remembers.
Certainly it was not how I imagined. Naive images of bourgie suburbia were initially upheld by a few rogue thatched roofs. Complicit in the deceit was Bletchley Park, looking just as you remember it from The Imitation Game and subscribing to the living-dead school of museology. However the high road Queensway was refreshingly run-down, if that’s not patronising. It boasts a mixture of chain and independent shops starting up as well as hanging on. Although, after being told it had ‘come a long way’, I did wonder about its previous state. Post-gentrification Bletchley apparently allows for grand old places rented by fast food joints. Fair.
The grid subsumed Bletchley but didn’t invade it. The most interesting architectural contribution Milton Keynes’ designation bequeathed, a pyramid leisure centre, was demolished in 2009. So there wasn’t much to identify our location. Except the street signs, and not just in the normal sense. Distinctively modernist, with sans serif typeface and elegant construction, they partake in an architectural idiom which forcibly unites this cannibalised village with its assailant. “Growing up I got confused when I realised other places didn’t have these”, my guide offered as I paused by one.
When we did hit the grid I realised why we were walking. Rather than overvaluing drivers, it prioritises pedestrians by segregating the two. From a car window, the town might appear to be all numbered identikit arteries — H6, V7 and so on. Yet on foot we were treated to repeated bouts of England’s green and pleasant. The system of artificial balancing lakes for flood protection, including the ‘Tear Drops’ so named for their shape, provides a ring of ersatz countryside right on the edge of town. Of course you can hear the faint roar of road wherever you are, but it just serves as a constant reminder of what you’re spared. Underpasses work here because they’re not underpasses; you aren’t forced underground. Marking the boundaries where estates meet with their names embossed, I like to imagine they engender micro civic-pride. And it’s not just walkers who win; healthy Milton Keynes enjoys almost 170 miles of well-planned cyclepaths on trademark coloured tarmac — the ‘redways’. How civilised.
There’s no shortage of estates worth visiting in Milton Keynes. Some have their own mythology. Norman Foster’s early contribution Beanhill, locals tell me, was only ever intended to be temporary accommodation for the builders. Not true. Rather its persistent building problems are caused by the original sin of using the incorrect materials. Ralph Erskine’s Eaglestone, on the other hand, with its generous shared green space, is your very own little piece of Scandinavia…apparently. And then there’s Fishermead. Fishermead is too “rough” (sorry, do you mean poor?) to even walk though, everyone says in that way which makes me instantly want to. A by-word for social problems, Fishermead is located right by the centre and treated like the town’s heart of darkness. ‘Here be dragons’, I half expect the map to dare me.
But there’s one place I couldn’t miss. In 1986, Milton Keynes Development Corporation held the ‘Energy World’ exhibition of fifty low-energy homes, individually designed by an array of international architects. Determined to locate its resting place, we traipsed through the deep suburban estate Shenley Lodge until it gave way to a mini-village of eclectically shaped houses sporting conservatories, domes, solar panels and so on. Putting aside the snag that it’s hard for an eco-village to be self-righteous when located a car ride from town without local amenities, there’s a lot to praise here. A bit of a trailblazer in its day, we owe our contemporary energy efficiency rating to Energy World and its bespoke energy-cost index. Plus the mash-up of building shapes and motifs is great fun to explore. Although the estate is pure futurology, some of the designs reference traditional German idyll as much as science fiction. Perhaps that’s why it’s well hidden; Energy World capitulated to Shenley Lodge easily enough. Certainly now the original windmill is pulled down, the only explicit reference came in a single plaque behind a garden hedge.
It’s surprising that it’s not better commemorated considering this is one idea we’re still trying today. Excitedly remembering nearby Oxley Woods, a starchitect’s government-sponsored 2008 iteration of a similar impulse, I looked it up on my phone. Initial joy at the images of distinctive, brightly coloured, angular homes was tempered by the top search results — ‘What went wrong at Oxley Woods?’ >> ‘Architect Richard Rodgers faces £5m legal claim over leaky…’ >> ‘The curse of the botched new build homes that are riddled…’. Clickbait for sure, but disappointment stopped me obliging.
Even as pedestrians, we entered the centre the way you should — via Milton Keynes Central rail station. Approached over a foot-bridge high above the A5, Station Square reveals itself teasingly slowly. The station and its two flanking buildings are continuous Miesian slabs, framing a large square broken by gently raised green verges. Reaching the centre slightly disappointed though. At one time, Owen Hatherley named Station Square “one of the most remarkable modernist set-pieces in Britain” for its bracing unfilled space. Since then, somebody’s done a pretty good job of filling it. Bus shelters, bike racks and shop fronts have sprung up like weeds, dampening the effect. You can see how the total blankness terminating in sheer mirrored glass walls would’ve made this feel like a sort of New-Town-Behind-The-Iron-Curtain. Perhaps only the uniquely large British Rail logo would have indicated your Buckinghamshire location. Now, the assorted bric-a-brac confuses an otherwise still impressive scene. There’s no doubt the new amenities are useful; I can’t bring myself to criticise having cover from the rain and somewhere to lock your bike. Yet, standing there, I felt the aesthetic loss. And I can’t help guess at the irony at play here. Mistaking bleakness for monotony, someone tried to mitigate the assumed dullness of the square with things. In so doing they took something specific and made it just like everywhere else. Five years after it opened in 1982, Station Square was distinctive enough to double up as imagined United Nations Headquarters in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Now, not so much.
Leaving Station Square, we started up Midsummer Boulevard. Train stations are often on the edge of town, rarely creating an auspicious entry point. Here you’re plugged straight into the central spine, a wide Hausmannesque avenue which runs west-east through the mall and out into Campbell Park, even aligned with the solstice sun. Boulevards like this are always exhilarating, whether Parisian, Soviet or Bucks-based. Their subservience to the car doesn't outweigh the invigorating, if slightly chilling, effect of open space. And in fact it’s now that Milton Keynes’ manicured pedestrian experience really kicks in. That’s not just due to the generous footpaths lined with flora, undulating up and down to keep you from the cars’ way. It’s also because of the ubiquitous black shelters you’ll notice accompanying your journey.
Utilitarian but elegant, these are one of the single most distinctive design elements of Milton Keynes Centre. Books call them ‘porte-cochère’, which is a term for porch-like extensions to buildings for sheltering carriages. Milton Keynes’ ‘porte-cochère’ are something else altogether, though. True, they are repeatedly placed before entrances to major buildings, occasionally with tailored signage. But they are also strategically positioned in straight lines across the boulevards, with at least one on either side brushing up against the road and another in a central island. Whatever we call them they serve a real purpose, as pedestrians self-elect to gather and cross under their roofs. Previously, I naively assumed it bad to encourage movement across roads without strict crossings, and yet they patently work. The wide boulevards are less alienating with these ‘porte-cochère’ stretching out across them, foreshadowing human travel and so making the road relatable and traversable. Just like the roundabouts, they are nodes of possibility and exchange which guide you through the town.
If residents do have a name for them I suspect its not ‘porte-cochère’. Unlike the distinctive road signs, my friend never reflected on them much. Probably to most people they just are. As opposed to so much modernism, you don’t need to think too much about these structures to see their value. Back in Station Square, a larger one right by the drop-off point announces “MILTON KEYNES” in overhead lettering, presenting arrivals with a soft yet distinctive brand identity. The good news is that, as far as I know, they are a part of the New Town’s inheritance which is relatively secure. Crucially, the motif is effective because its comprehensive. If new developments do gnaw away at the ‘porte-cochère’, pulling a few down here or there, something significant would be at stake.
We peeled off Midsummer Boulevard into the CBX (that’s 80s for ‘Central Business Exchange’). A gormless row of commercial buildings, it’s actually a series of individual developments — CBX1, CBX2, CBX3 — presumably intended to be endlessly extendable just like the grid. Inside, it’s eerily clean, quiet and white. Many of the businesses are incongruously down-at-heel, which suggests something hasn’t quite gone according to (The) plan. Incredibly, the CBX is home to a full-blown set of winter gardens, housed in a sloping glass atrium that looks how I imagine science-research centres do. This is Milton Keynes at its most space-age. There’s gangways and walkways overhead, lurid plants nestled underneath, and all around cold, smooth surfaces. It was as if we were on the film set for a colony-sized space station, where citizens enjoy artificial landscapes for recreation on ‘floor such-and-such’. The illusion wasn’t damaged by being alone apart from a couple of kids on skateboards, or by the oversized banner advertising for the strip club upstairs. After all, if we did colonise outer-space, this is probably what it would be like.
Eager to see the Grade II* listed mall, we pressed on. Opened by the PM herself in 1979 and the biggest in the UK at the time, it’s a sleek miesian affair regarded by some as a bit of a masterpiece as far as shopping goes. Inside we found dim corridors with faux street names, compensated by a spacious hall-cum-throneroom for Bletcthley’s usurper, John Lewis. Surely I missed something. The newer extension recently re-branded ‘intu: Milton Keynes’ (imagine that meeting) actually relates to the original building fairly well. Dissected by Midsummer Boulevard, the roof arcs over the road providing an invitingly liminal, semi-public space. Here we found perhaps the most loved item in the town’s generous portfolio of public art; a series of concrete cows. They’re on secondment from their original location further out, where they were such a landmark replicas currently take their place. I don’t know if artist Liz Leyh in 1978 meant her work as a swipe at now common preconceptions about postwar architecture, but it’s certainly hilarious that the official sign feels compelled to tackle the connection. ‘The cows were once cynically said to symbolise a new town consisting entirely of concrete’ it reads, before unnecessarily pointing out that ‘the reality of course is very different. Milton Keynes has 22 million trees and 20% of the city (sic.) is parkland’. The New Town doth protest too much. Of course they’re right, but it doesn’t help the author’s cause that the cows circle a dead tree trunk. The mall extension incorporated an old oak you see, now drowned by poor drainage. My guide chastised the stupidity of his hometown, but what’s not to love about this serendipitous sculpture?
On the far side of the mall stands ‘the Point’, a mixed leisure complex designed by BDP where a red exoskeleton covers a zigguart of mirrored glass. When so much in Milton Keynes keeps you at a distance, either set back from boulevards and car parks or within unassailable walls, ‘the Point’ draws you in. Maybe that’s why younger people, suffering from a shortage of places to be, are attracted to it. “Good to see all the goths still hang out at the Point”, my friend remarked as we approached. Indeed, one group were sat in a circle right up against the permanently closed doors, almost as if paying their respects or waiting for it to wake up.
‘The Point’ is best known for being the site of the first ever multiplex cinema in the UK, but the screens were actually located in the nondescript shed building behind. Opened 30 years ago, it celebrated the age of the blockbuster to which it owed its construction by hosting the premier of Back to the Future. Since then its switched hands a few times, and in 2003–06 it briefly became the only ever ‘EasyCinema’, a product of EasyGroup’s more hubristic phase. There was an attempt here at a different model for more difficult times — films at the end of their run cost 20p a go, and customers were encouraged to bring their own food and drink. When I heard this I thought of the adverts you see for Odeon’s luxury Lounge, where mixologists and sushi are on hand for desirable couples in plush seats. ‘EasyCinema’ I suppose was the other response to piracy; instead of selling ‘the experience’, it directly competed on price (almost).
Ultimately ‘EasyCinema’ failed and itself reverted to Odeon management until its closure last year. Rejected for listing by Historic England, ‘the Point’ is scheduled for demolition. It’s set to be replaced by another retail-restaurant complex, which will presumably boast larger rentable floorspace and, to be fair, maybe greater footfall. ‘The Point’ was the soulless new development of its day, criticised at the time for causing the closure of independent businesses, so there might be a touch of hypocrisy in bemoaning its replacement by a contemporary equivalent. But the loss will be felt — and not only by those actively campaigning to keep it. Low-rise Milton Keynes being what it is, ‘the Point’ is visible from surprisingly far, and is a recognisable, reassuring landmark while travelling through. At one stage it hosted a nightclub, where perhaps more than one MK family got off the ground, and originally had red neon lights which created a light pyramid after dark. In a town accused, rightly or wrongly, of a civic pride deficit it seems ill-advised to loose it.
Inspecting the more recent retail areas makes this clearer. The so-called ‘Theatre District’ does feature a genuinely impressive building for its eponymous, singular attraction, but is otherwise a sterile strip of restaurants and clubs. This may be where you’ll find central Milton Keynes’ only contribution to CAMRA’s The Good Beer Guide, but it’s a Slug and Lettuce. Chain-snobbery is easy, but the issue is more than that alone. Take the piazza (not square, but piazza — the website is clear) of nightout-by-numbers venues dubbed ‘the HUB’. The accompanying high-rise apartments are pleasingly wedged into the urban action, but it so overtly, desperately gropes after a contrived ‘buzz’ they might as well have named it ‘THE-PLACE-TO-BE’. Habitually, I took a photo. “But this could be anywhere in Britain”, my friend objected. When so much of Milton Keynes couldn’t, creating places like this fails the town.
Much more distinctive at least is the Xscape, built in 2000. Its owned by a company whose raison d’etre is presumably to create retail sheds that ape 90s Chessington World of Adventures rides (just check out its Castleford namesake opened three years later). A thick smudge against the sky, the Xscape peeks above the squat town. Inside ‘the silver slug’, as its nicknamed by my hosts, is a mix of well-used hangouts, shops, extreme sports touts and, in a surreal move, an indoor ski slope. We had dinner and a beer outside a Wetherspoons under the perimeter. There’s that outer space feeling again. It was just another chain, but spilling out onto that empty expanse, with the sun down and streetlamps up, I could kid myself we were holed up under a hangar on some backwater planet.
Before daylight vanished completely, we visited Campbell Park, a major piece of landscaping reminiscent of Victorian-era romanticism. There’s lots to bring you here during our too-short summer weeks. I admired a public stage with bench seating cut out of the hillside like a mini version of the fantastical National Bowl, Milton Keynes’ clay pit transformed into a natural amphitheatre. Also, a dramatic viewing point serving as the eastern terminus of Midsummer Boulevard is topped by a simple, but rather nice piece of public art from 2012. There’s a huge amount of this in Milton Keynes. Partly the legacy of having employed an ‘artist in residence’ in earlier times, this is sustained by a proactive public art strategy today. Throughout our walk various shapes and structures (some prosaic, some exciting) revealed themselves from behind hedges, between paths or inside buildings. Not all are that good. Near the viewing point an almost incomprehensible sculpture that looks to be a world history / sun dial mash up, still fenced off, replaces a much-loved fountain. Yet there’s no doubt the town is better off for this general approach. It’s a gentle reminder that something special, and just slightly utopian, was at work when this place started. After watching the light dwindle over Campbell Park’s many other examples, we turned back.
The self-appointed mission of a Londoner, to prove the Rough Guide wrong about Milton Keynes, is patronising, almost as much as the question which pops into his head — “yes, but would you live here?”. Of course everyone could live anywhere, if you had people and a job. Milton Keynes’ flaw may be the relative scarcity of the serendipity from street life and independent businesses (how do you foster the reality without the reputation?). But the modest point is that this is somewhere completely unique, steeped in history, and the built embodiment of a proactive vision for organising social life. This would be trite, if it was not for the startling number of my contemporaries who write off swathes of their country as non-places, not even worth a visit, or worse, as “shitholes” (*wince*). How is this okay?
I started by contradicting a series of common associations made by those who write about place. But in their imaginative characterisations they do justice to the real exoticism of this town. It is the glib, everyday assumptions that are ripe for a good slaying. Many who bemoan the growing homogenisation of places and experiences readily dismiss those a discounted train ride away which they never intend to visit. Well — get out more. There’s Los Angeles in Buckinghamshire, don’t you know.
