Dianne Sutton
I was born in Newport Pagnell 65 years ago, before Milton Keynes was even thought about. Life was very quiet back then! At that time you could get the bus to Stoney Stratford or Wolverton if you needed anything, which wasn’t often as everything we needed was in Newport.
Our shops sold everything apart from “big purchases” like a new coat. That’s when you’d get a train to Northampton or the bus to Bedford to go to the ‘big shops’ – my mum used to call them “The Stores”. It was a big day out to do that.
Milton Keynes was designated just before I left school and I could see it would become the place to be. A place with a future.
Dianne still has her copy of the Homeworld Exhibition catalogue.
We now live in Bradwell Common on what was the Homeworld Exhibition site. In 1981 the development corporation sold land to developers to give them a chance to showcase their best house designs. It was a way to literally build Milton Keynes and a way of encouraging people to buy here. Plus it was an opportunity for developers to show what they were capable of and they were such a mix of properties.
“Milton Keynes was designated just before I left school and I could see it would become the place to be. A place with a future.”
There were starter homes, detached homes and family homes. Some of them were very innovative at the time – one of them was called the solar house which faced the sun and created it’s own energy. Ours is a Scandinavian bungalow design which means it has very good insulation: it keeps the heat in, the light in and the noise out! All houses should be built like this I think. Where we live has a lovely community due to the wide range of properties around and it brings a wide range of people from different walks of life.