Happy Birthday to a great city. Created 50 years ago today by ministerial order, the city has transformed this area of North Buckinghamshire. It now has a population of over a quarter of a million citizens. We moved here in 2009 - and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. We live close to Furzton Lake - a carefully planned artificial balancing lake - which is now home to a variety of birds. I love being able to walk from my home to Milton Keynes Central station through two miles of parkland. (Despite its image as a concrete city, it has millions of trees and a redway grid offering a healthy alternative to its road & roundabouts grid)
It also has a fascinating history. One of the advantages of a planned development in the 1960s onwards - is that archaeologists went in before building began. Roman villas (& a fine mosaic now on permanent display in the shopping centre); bronze and Iron Age settlements & a number of treasure hoards have been found. I live half a kilometre from Watling Street, a hundred metres from an Iron Age settlement and a few doors down from where a gold Roman brooch was discovered. Bletchley Park is a 25 minute walk away - and Alan Turing stayed in a then-pub in the estate neighbouring ours.
In this blog I will be writing about that history - there are already a number of such posts (do take a look) - but I'm working my way through the many archaeological reports that have been published - and other histories that have been published.
And if you haven't visited MK - it's worth a visit. Explore The redways (The red coloured paths wide enough for cyclists and pedestrians to peacefully co-exist - that go through the countryside in the city). Visit Bletchley Park, or our Roman villa in Bancroft. Walk through Stony Stratford past the building in which Richard III took his nephew into "protective custody", or Newport Pagnell - a key to the English Civil War of the 1640s (or Shenley Toot - or the ruins of Wolverton Castle - both built during the civil war after King Stephen seized the throne)
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