'Pooleyville', the nickname for the North Bucks New City was derived from the man who brainchild it was, the then Chief Architect and Planner for Buckinghamshire County Council, Frederick Pooley. Pooley was keenly aware of the developments in architectural thinking and also the experience of new towns in Britain: the shifts from the garden city movement to places to house those made homeless by the destruction of the Second World War. New towns were to have a balance of residential and employment accommodation as well as community facilities. By the sixties further challenges needed to be met. London and the South East were becoming over populated and so new towns had to be further away albeit accessible. The motor car, which was providing freedom and employment for many, was becoming a major headache in urban areas. Towns had to be designed to accommodate the motor car without being dominated by it.
Pooley's vision was for fifty neighbourhoods of five thousand people placed around four loops enclosing open space. The line of the loops would be marked by monorail track providing free public transport accessible by all residents. Industrial areas would be to the north and south.
Pooley's vision didn't survive the politics of London centric planners or the laissez faire of the Thatcher era during which later parts were built. Nevertheless the city did become a balanced community of manual and non-manual workers, living in neighbourhoods demarcated by a grid of dual carriage way roads sandwiched between linear park land with foot paths, bridle paths and cycle ways. Areas of employment were close to residential areas and all with abundant green space and literally millions of trees. There are lakes and woodland for recreation.
Milton Keynes embraces Newport Pagnell to the north and Bletchley to the south. The Grand Union Canal meanders through it, the MI runs down the eastern side and the A5 dissects it. The London to Birmingham railway perhaps gave it birth, as the village of Wolverton now within Milton Keynes was selected at the site for the railway workshops. In ways similar to Crewe and Swindon a community grew around Wolverton and is now evidenced by rows of victorian cottages amongst the twentieth century architecture of the city.
This is though a blog about manufacturing. The first large foreign companies to come were Alps Electric, Coca Cola, Mobil and Volkswagon. UK business brought Abbey National, Argos and the Open University. The days of large manufacturing units were coming to an end. In 2000, Milton Keynes was home to 4,500 companies most employing fewer than twenty people and there was a mix between manufacturing and the service sector.
Today the city's own website highlights Red Bull Racing; other websites pick out Lockhead Martin at nearby Ampthill and Unilever Research at Sharnbrook, both of which are closer to Bedford. Milton Keynes finds itself within what is known as Motorsport Valley stretching south of Birmingham through Oxfordshire. As well as Red Bull in Milton Keynes, there is Banbury with Haas, Brackley with Mercedes and Wantage with Williams. There is then a large cluster of specialist motor sport suppliers at Silverstone Industrial Park close to the racing circuit.
The overriding story about manufacturing in Milton Keynes is that it is about small and medium sized enterprises, with a strong bias towards technology in a community where knowledge is shared for mutual benefit.
Further reading:
- Mark Clapson, A Social history of Milton Keynes
- ORTOLANO, GUY. “PLANNING THE URBAN FUTURE IN 1960s BRITAIN.” The Historical Journal, vol. 54, no. 2, 2011, pp. 477–507. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23017981. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.
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