When Lynn Anderson had a hit with that record in 1970 our infant New City did indeed promise a rose garden. Even someone with as un-green fingers as Your Truly could have could have grown a bloom with such a sweet smell that Billy Wobblestick The Bard of Avon would have been proud.
Today the whole world knows about Bletchley but to the world Milton Keynes is still something of an enigma. Well as a City we haven’t yet reached our first birthday have we ?In 1970 Bletchley was a railway station you simply passed through on the train. Not many trains stopped there on their way from Birmingham New Street to London Euston and those trains which did stop had few passengers wanting to get off at Bletchley.
Bletchley ? Where was Bletchley ? Did anyone know ? Milton Keynes, however, was something, somewhere some people thought they may just of heard about. There were new towns giving homes to the expanding post-war population but Milton Keynes was going to be a New City. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II within her Platinum Jubilee made Milton Keynes a City but how many people outside our country have ever heard of us. Bletchley, however, is world famous.
Bletchley in 1970, three years after an area of land in North Buckinghamshire was designated to build a new city, nobody had heard of Bletchley Park but as I got on the train in Birmingham that was where I was heading. On that day I was a young man hoping beyond hope that I was going to become a student teacher at Milton Keynes College of Education in Bletchley Park.
What’s this got to do with roses ?
Be patient will you and I’ll tell you !
It hadn't been raining when I left Birmingham but on arrival at Bletchley it was drizzling. With my heart pounding and hoping so much that I would pass the interview to be offered a place at Milton Keynes College of Education I stepped off the train. Leaving the station I had my first view of Bletchley, I looked across Sherwood Drive and tried to get my bearings on the map the college had sent me in the post. My five senses suddenly condensed into just one. What was that smell ? NO, what was that evil stench !
Did I really want to attend lectures in this Bletchley wrapped in such a horrible air ? What was it ? Did I want to live in the halls of residence at Milton Keynes College of Education and breathe in whatever it was that stank so much ? The problem was that Milton Keynes College of Education was the only college application I had made. In 1970 if you wanted to be a school teacher you had to secure a place at a college of education where you spent three years training to do the job. You had to pass yearly exams and more important pass three teaching practices, fail one and that was the end. These days it is different, a would be teacher has to gain a degree in a chosen subject then stay on to pass a post graduate certificate in education.
Leaving the Bletchley Station the rain increased, the map I was trying to follow was sodden. So was I. On arrival at Milton Keynes College of Education the Registrar took my suit jacket and draped it over the radiator in her office, at least I was not so much a drowned rat for my interview with Principal Doctor Garwood.
The Registrar of Milton Keynes College of Education in Bletchley Park explained to me that what I could smell was the smoke from the kilns at nearby London Brick Company. (Was London nearby ? I thought it was fifty odd miles further down the railway track ?) Because it was raining the clouds and the rain were forcing the smell to the ground. On sunny days the smell was still there but not so strong and besides I would get used to it. Would I ? When smog covered Birmingham I did not get used to it, I put up with it. Smog in Birmingham did not come every day of the year just now and then, apparently this sulphur smell from The London Brick Company at one level or another was ever present. If I was offered a place at Milton Keynes College of Education I would just have to put up with it.
As I left to walk back in the rain to Bletchley Station the Registrar hinted that I should not worry, I would be offered a place at Milton Keynes College of Education. She did not say anything more about Bletchley's unique smell.
I was indeed offered a place at Milton Keynes
College of Education. For three years I lived in Bletchley Park and became a
Bletchley Man. I have tried to remember the postal address of my new
home:
Middle Hall MKCE Bletchley Park Bletchley Buckinghamshire I am sure the post code was BL something or other. It was not MK - Milton Keynes. Actually I don’t think there were such things a post codes but never mind.
In this book I proudly recall my memories of the New City of Milton Keynes inviting you to do the same.
I have lived through the legends of our City which as you have probably noticed fascinate me. I am a proud Mkeneyan but in 1970 there was no Milton Keynes to be a proud citizen of. Emigrating from the Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands I became a Bletchley man. With just a brief spell in Newport Pagnell, I have lived in Bletchley since that time all those decades ago when I came to Bletchley Park,
With its unique smell aka stench, how fortunate I was the day I got on that train from Birmingham New Street to Bletchley the Home of The Codebreakers.
Now I will explain why it was so easy to grow roses in the southern part of the designated area for Milton Keynes New City. (Thank you for your patience.)
On the edge of Bletchley as you approached Newton Longville was the London Brick Company. It stood where today you will find Newton Leyes. Digging clay from the soil, one of its excavations today is The Blue Lagoon Park, bricks were formed and then baked in its kilns. It was the sulphur from brick-baking that bathed Bletchley in the stench.
I am not a gardener, my wife is and she inherited her touch from her father and he from his father who was head gardener at a property in pre-World War One Wavendon. My father in-law told me that the descending smell from the London Brick Company helped to keep the roses healthy. We have a rose garden in our home today in 2023, my wife spends a fortune on products to keep the blooms looking good and smelling sweet. Better to so that than live in the pong I inhaled on Bletchley Station in 1970.
In the 1970’s people did not understand about the climate being affected by what was polluted into the atmosphere. London Brick was a major employer, every day its lorries could be seen taking Bletchley Bricks all over the country to build homes. A bit of an enigma, early estates in Milton Keynes the likes of Tinkers Bridge and Netherfield had houses not made from bricks.
London Brick is long, long gone and Milton Keynes roses have to fend for themselves with fertiliser from the likes of Frosts Garden Centre but all over the country this former Bletchley employer has put its finger prints on hoses from London to Manchester, from Birmingham to Norwich. Here in Milton Keynes it added Newton Leys and The Blue Lagoon to our City’s heritage but I have a bit of an idea for something more,
In Northampton you will find what is known locally as the Northampton Lighthouse. This is the former test tower which stood within the factory of the Northampton Lift Company. On the factory site now stands a housing estate but the tower remains as a landmark and part of the town’s heritage. When Newton Leys was built couldn’t its planners have reconstructed a replica chimney from the kilns of London Brick Company ? We could have had the Milton Keynes Lighthouse !
No, that could never have happened. It would
have been too big and could not comply with the Milton Keynes Development
Corporation’s foundation stone that no building shall be taller than its
surrounding trees. Milton Keynes Council would never have given permission for
such to happen !
I think that the smell actually cam from the methane gas from the London Brick Landfill pits on the same site. I worked for London Brick landfill, which became Shanks and Macewan for many years.
ReplyDeleteI lived close to the brickwork, the sulphur smell was different to the methane smell. The brickwork would push yellow clouds down our street in the 70,s. I had v bad bronchitis then. My mum grew fab plants inside and out. But one day ALL her houseplants died at same time. She def blamed the brickwork for that. I also lived back of the landfill, which had different effects. I live in the Fens now, so much clean air! Until they build a huge incinerator which I hope does not go through!
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