Figure 3 New and old in Milton Keynes
(a) The crowded village of Stony Stratford with its long High Street (the old Roman Watling Street), old inns, churches, market and Horsefair Green
(b) New city housing estate (Fishermead), showing the more spacious new layout with the typical Milton Keynes grid pattern, roundabouts, and green tree-planted areas separating the estates
Figure 4 The changing age structure in Milton Keynes and its comparison with national patterns. By 1983 the population of Milton Keynes was still very much younger than in the country as a whole, but less so than in 1976. There was still a higher proportion of those aged 0–11 and 20–40, but there had been a significant increase in the proportions of teenagers, middle-aged and older people in the population. Based on Milton Keynes Household Survey, 1983
During my research in 1980–4 there was thus a rapidly growing population, drawn mainly from London and the South-East. New houses and halls were being built, schools, pubs and churches opened, and new industries established. The population structure was fairly characteristic of a developing area: more in the 0–11 and 20–40 age groups and more families with young children than in the British population as a whole (a difference gradually decreasing as the town became established). Similarly the socioeconomic structure had its own particular features, with a relatively, though not strikingly, high proportion engaged in skilled manual (and perhaps later non-manual) work (see figures 4–6). The owner-occupier rate for housing was low, if rising, by national standards (41 per cent in 1979, 49 per cent in 1983 as against the 1983 national average of 57 per cent). This was hardly surprising given the numbers of houses for rent built in the early days of the city, but the high proportion of what was – in effect – council housing may be unexpected to those who think of the Milton Keynes population as all ‘middle class’ or unusually well-to-do.
Figure 5 Socio-economic profile of Milton Keynes in 1979. Based on Postal Survey, 1979
Milton Keynes thus represented a complex interaction between old and new and was in some ways gradually moving nearer to the national average. In certain respects it could indeed claim to be a ‘new city’ – an image effectively propagated by the vision (and lavish advertising) of the development corporation and its officials – and was certainly characterised by an influx of new population and government funding in the 1970s and early 1980s.
It could be, therefore, that the proliferation of music in Milton Keynes should be related to this recent development. One could point to the gathering of a young and mobile population in carefully planned urban locations and to the enlightened policy of MKDC, who from the start emphasised the development of recreational facilities and the encouragement of the arts. The patterns of local music could thus be viewed as a successful response to these development policies in the favourable context of a new city.
This clearly was one dimension. But it would be over-simple to see it purely in these terms. The evidence for this assertion will emerge from the later description, but one point is worth making at once. This is that amidst the effective advertising, it is easy for outsiders to forget that Milton Keynes did not begin from a tabula rasa. There was already an extensive population in the area, particularly in the established town of Bletchley (which long continued to be the single largest centre of population within Milton Keynes) but also in Stony Stratford and Wolverton, each with further links to such other nearby centres as Woburn Sands, Newport Pagnell, Buckingham and the intervening villages. These towns and villages had their own active and continuing cultures – different, no doubt, from the larger-scale and more ‘nationally’ oriented institutions later encouraged by the MKDC but each with its own validity. The later developments in the 1970s and 1980s can only be fully understood as involving some interaction – often congenial, sometimes abrasive – with already established local institutions.
Figure 6 Milton Keynes facts and figures (1983). Based on Milton Keynes Household Survey, 1983
A detailed account of the earlier history of local music would be a subject on its own, but some illustrations can put the later situation into perspective. One was the long choral tradition in the locality. This went back to the last century, particularly in the established association between choirs and local churches and organists, and continued strongly in more recent times. Between the wars, for example, there was the flourishing Co-operative Choral Society in Bletchley under its lively railway conductor, still well remembered by older Bletchley inhabitants, followed by the Bletchley Ladies Choir, which lasted for over twenty years from the 1940s on, as well as regular choral performances in the local churches, and a well-attended Free Church Choir Festival in the 1950s. Many of the surrounding villages had their own choral societies and competed with the Women’s Institute choirs in the Buckingham music festival. Newport Pagnell’s choral society, still flourishing in the 1980s, had been putting on performances and inviting outside artists to sing with them since 1910 (with a few interruptions), and people still talked of the wartime occasion at the Electra Cinema when Owen Brannigan sang and was paid with £10 and two dozen eggs. These earlier traditions formed the base for later developments like the still-existing Bletchley-based Sherwood Choir, drawing many of its members from the older Bletchley Ladies Choir. This and many other recent groups were able to build on the established choral tradition not only for their singers but also for ready audiences, instrumental support, and recognised performance venues like the old churches.
The same interaction between the new and the already established was also to be found in other musical forms. Brass bands played an important role in the ‘new city’, merely the most recent manifestation of an already strong local tradition which included several brass bands dating back to the turn of the century or earlier. Similarly there were earlier orchestras such as the inter-war Apollo Orchestra in Bletchley, church concert parties like the Spurgeon Baptist Chapel’s Busy Bees, and dance bands like the Papworth Trio (figure 7) who were performing all through the war for parents’ association dances in the school halls – a role now more usually fulfilled by the ‘ceilidh’ folk bands – and continued to play for Bletchco Players (a drama group still in existence) till the 1950s. The newer musical groups thus fitted easily into the local situation, sharing in the same tradition of performance for local events and societies.
There was also the already-existing base of individual performers and local music teachers, some of whom had been putting on regular recitals by their pupils in the inter-war years, and of schools and other groups producing operas and musical plays. To this was added the foundation of the LEA’s North Bucks Music Centre in Bletchley in 1964. This provided a focus both for school music and for local groups founded in the seventies to practise on its premises off Sherwood Drive, among them the Sherwood Sinfonia, Sherwood Choir and re-formed Bletchley Band.
Figure 7 The Papworth Trio, a popular dance band in the Bletchley area from the 1930s to the 1950s, led by the