presentation given at Holne Chase archives, 18 October 2016, by Dr Katrina Navickas, University of Hertfordshire

1. Milton Keynes and its place
within new towns history
Dr Katrina Navickas
University of Hertfordshire

2. ‘old’ towns – they were ‘new’ once
Roman town of Silchester
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Calleva_Atrebatum
Winchelsea, founded under Edward I
http://www.winchelsea.net/

3. A brief history of new towns

4. Factory towns: New Lanark (1786)

5. 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

6. Factory towns: Saltaire (1851)

7. Factory towns: Port Sunlight (1888)

8. Garden City movement (1898-)

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 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

12. ‘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/

13. 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

14. 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

15. Researching old towns in England
• English place name society
• Victoria County History
• Historical trade directories
• Maps and tithe maps
• Census and parish records

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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?

20. 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

21. 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)