City in Buckinghamshire, England
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes was planned with a grid of roads, a million trees and six concrete cattle, and it somehow became one of Britain's great success stories.
Key information
- County
- Buckinghamshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 290,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- The grid roads, concrete cows, roundabouts, the Open University and Bletchley Park
- What locals are called
- Milton Keynesians (informally, MK residents)
- Famous people
- Alan Turing's wartime work at Bletchley Park is the city's best-known story; The Imitation Game (2014) brought it to the screen, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing
- Football clubs
- Milton Keynes Dons (MK Dons)
About Milton Keynes
The city that was drawn on a blank map
Most British cities grew slowly, one muddy lane at a time. Milton Keynes was designed in advance. It was designated in 1967 to take overspill from London, and the aim was to build a whole city on farmland and around existing towns and villages such as Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford. The name comes from a real village, Milton Keynes, which still exists. The first part is from Middleton, and Keynes comes from the de Cahaignes family, who held the manor in the Middle Ages. The Development Corporation made one of the boldest choices in British planning. Instead of tightly packed streets, it laid out a loose grid of roads, each running between districts, with housing set in landscaped squares.
Why you'll never stop counting roundabouts
The grid has horizontal roads called H roads and vertical ones called V roads. Their names are not poetic: H5 Portway and V6 Grafton Street are real. Drivers know them by the numbers or the names. The roundabouts are the city's trademark. Instead of traffic lights at junctions, the planners used roundabouts to keep traffic flowing, and the result is a city with a reputation for free-moving roads. The grid squares were meant to be self-contained neighbourhoods with their own shops and schools. Redways, a network of paths for cyclists and walkers, run under or over many of the roads, so you can cross much of the city without meeting a car.
Concrete cows and a million trees
The most famous residents never moved. In 1978 the American artist Liz Leyh created the Concrete Cows, a herd of three cows and three calves, as a joke about the new town's rural setting. The originals have moved around, but they remain the city's best-known public art. Trees are central to the plan too. The city was designed to be green, with parks and lakes threaded through it, and millions of trees and shrubs were planted. Willen Lake and Campbell Park are two of the best-known spaces. The Peace Pagoda by Willen Lake, built by Buddhist monks and nuns in 1980, was the first of its kind in Europe.
Codebreakers, a gleaming centre and an open university
Bletchley Park, now part of Milton Keynes, was the home of Britain's Second World War codebreakers. Alan Turing and thousands of others worked there to break German ciphers, and the site is now a museum. Nearby is The National Museum of Computing, which keeps early machines running. The Open University was founded in 1969 and has its main campus at Walton Hall in the city. It was set up to teach adults by distance learning and has taught millions of students worldwide. The shopping centre, centre:mk, opened in 1979 and is a listed building. It is a long, glassy arcade of shops set in a grid of its own, and it was an early taste of the UK's modern shopping style.
Dons, Formula One and a city of firsts
The football club is MK Dons. Wimbledon FC relocated to Milton Keynes in September 2003, and the club was renamed Milton Keynes Dons in June 2004, a decision that remains controversial among football fans. The club plays at Stadium MK, which hosted three matches at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Motorsport has a strong presence in the area. Red Bull Racing's factory is in Milton Keynes and the team has won multiple Formula One championships. Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, grew up in nearby Stevenage rather than the city itself, but the area's racing links are strong. Milton Keynes was also home to one of the first multiplex cinemas in Britain, at The Point, which opened in 1985. It also has the indoor ski slope Xscape, and a real snow slope in a place with no mountains.
Related articles
Alan Turing
Published
Alan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator at Bletchley Park, and cracked codes that shortened the Second World War. His story is odder, and sadder, than the legend.