Friday, October 29, 2010

Loughton

As a teenager in the 1950s I got a Saturday job working at the Talbot Inn washing dishes and stacking shelves. In those days there was still no M1 and coach travellers used the Talbot regularly as a refreshment stop. Trade was good, particularly on Saturday and I imagine that Loughton was a favourite stop as parking was much easier than in, say, Fenny or Stony Stratford. The landlord was Cliff Benmore, a muscular man who used to tell me he was glad he had his health and strength and that this was the most important thing in life. At my tender age I could scarcely relate to that.

Loughton was still a very small village in the 1950s, much like others in the area, with the exception that the A5 ran along the edge of the village and probably brought most, if not all its business. There were four pubs along the A5 - The Fountain, The Plough, The Talbot and The Bell, together with a few village shops. I think the Post Office in Shenley Church End served both communities. The old 17th/18th century part of the village was about half a mile to the north around a triangular green bounded by Leys road, Pitcher Lane and the Bradwell Road. Here there was a Church, Primary School and Manor House. The population was probably around the 400 mark.

The Talbot Inn was strategically the best placed, being at the crossroads of the Shenley-Bradwell Road and the London Road in a dip, and therefore a good place to stop. The London Road is still there but is now a quiet residential street, although early 20th century photographs don't show a great deal of traffic. The Talbot was probably built in the 17th century and enlarged in the 18th century to it present size when the coaching trade was at its peak. The arrival of the railways seriously hit the coaching trade and the 19th century censuses do not betray a great deal of activity. In the mid 19th century it was run by William Hines, who saw himself as a farmer first and innkeeper second. It was the motor car which revived the fortunes of the Talbot and the stables were converted to garages and they even sold petrol. As I mentioned earlier it was a busy place until the M1 began to drain away business.


Further up the hill is an old tavern called The Fountain. It was a "spit and sawdust" local until it was acquired in the 1930s by a character called Captain Frederick Maxwell McCormac, who upgraded both the pub and its clientele and proudly proclaimed it on his sign as "The Inn which is Different". There were some fields associated with The Fountain and I have heard that some of his friends used to fly in.

On the hill to the north was another pub called The Bell. This pub was still functioning after the war but it has now disappeared.

On the Shenley side of the London Road, between The Talbot and The Fountain stood The Plough. This is now a private residence.

There was a pub called The Wheatsheaf in Loughton in the 19th century. I don't know where this was located.

The rest was farmland, divided between four farms: Manor Farm, Lodge Farm, Rectory Farm and Old Farm. The 1851 Census shows a complete farming community, with a few farmers, a vicar and a land agent, and the supporting trades: butcher, baker, carpenter, blacksmith, tailor, shoemaker. The bulk of the population is made up of agricultural labourers and shepherds and a significant number of paupers - illustrating as much as anything the decline in agriculture in the 19th century.

Loughton is now a residential development close to Central Milton Keynes. The old Common Lane, which once would have taken you to Bradwell Common and Seckloe mound now comes to an abrupt halt after a few yards at the new A5.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Seckloe

At some point in the 10th Century the idea of the Hundred Court emerged. An area of 100 hides was designated with a meeting place where legal and fiscal transactions could take place. The Seckloe Hundred (It is variously spelled) comprised Newton [Longeville], [Water] Eaton, Simpson, Loughton, Woughton, Woolstone, Willen, Great Linford, Bradwell, Wolverton, Calverton and Shenley. Seckloe was chosen as the meeting place and gave its name to the hundred.

Seckloe Hill is now the site of the Milton Keynes Library. It is the highest central point at 366 feet above sea level and was in the south west corner of Bradwell Common.

Seckloe is likely named after a person - Segg's Low (hlaew). A "Low" in Saxon times meant an low hill or mound. We tend nowadays to think of low as the opposite of high, but the original meaning of the word was a rise of some sort, but not high. It is possible that Segg or Secca built a mound and fortified it as a dwelling. The mound that has been replicated in Central Milton Keynes is not large and was probably no more than a thane's domestic enclosure. Centrally placed mounds were the most common places for the hundred meetings and as can be seen from the map, Seckloe is central.
Those in Newton Longville and Stoke Hammond had a little further to travel, but the extra mile or two was probably not considered a hardship. On older maps you can see that a lot of the old trackways led to Secklow. It may not have been so remote after all.

It is interesting that very few of these places actually developed into more significant places. Food production and trade and commerce were done elsewhere and this suggests that places like Seckloe were purely used for administrative functions.

In the 13th Century hundreds were organized into larger administrative units, usually by putting three together. Thus the Seckloe, Moulsoe and Bunsty Hundreds were amalgamated into the Newport Hundreds. Henceforth meetings were held in Newport and the older places dwindled in importance.

You might ask why these meeting places were in "the middle of nowhere"? Well the fact is that our ancestors did not necessarily see towns and cities as the best way of organizing society. The Romans and earlier Mediterranean civilazations did organize around urban centres, but after the collapse of the Roman Empire there was a general ruralization of Europe and North Africa. Once thriving and quite large cities were abandoned all over the Mediterranean world and Western europe. Silchester in England is a good example.

Our Saxon forbears were not conditioned to towns - of which there were very few- and saw nothing out of the ordinary in meeting at a remote place to conduct business.

Until 40 years ago, Seckloe was about as remote as you could get in Milton Keynes. One lane led to Loughton and the other to the village of Bradwell. There was a farm track that led you down to the Linford - Woolstone road, but I suspect it was little used. None of this is recognisable today after 40 years of urban development. Now, for totemic reasons, the mound is at the very heart of Milton Keynes.

Friday, October 22, 2010

The announcement of the New City

In 1964 the proposed city didn't even have a name. I came across this yellowing copy of the Wolverton Express amongst my mother's papers. The publication date was November 20th 1964. At that time the combined population of Wolverton, Stony Stratford, Bletchley  and all points in between was about 50,000. The projection for the new city was an eventual population of 250,000. Last year it reached 236,000 - an astonishing growth for only 40 years. And as you can see from the plan, that whole area around Beachampton, Nash and Whaddon is still undeveloped.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Newport Hundreds


The old Saxon unit of land measurement was called the hide. It was not a mathematical concept, but rather based upon the amount of land that could support a family - the family itself being a loose concept, but the original understanding was that it would support one warrior.  Historians have estimated that in this part of the world a hide was approximately 120 acres. The hide was also used to assess taxes.

The Hundred, or a land area of approximately 100 hides, was the next step up from the manor for local administration. There are three hundreds in our area, the Bonnestou  or Bunsty Hundred, the Moulsoe Hundred and the Sigelai or Seckloe Hundred. Each Hundred took its name from the meeting point - usually a hill - Moulsoe, Seckloe and Bunsty. Each is more-or-less central for the district. and meetings and courts were held at an agreed central point.

The Hundred Courts declined in importance from the seventeenth century when County Courts began to assume more importance but they were still in use in the 19th century.

The Bunsty Hundred, includes all the North Bucks land north of the River Ouse and falls outside of the city of Milton Keynes. It includes the parishes of Castlethorpe, Haversham, Hanslope, Little Linford, Gayhurst, Stoke Goldington, Ravenstone, Weston Underwood, Tyringham, Lathbury, Olney, Lavendon, Cold Brayfield and Newton Blossomville.

Moulsoe Hundred  was made up of the long strip of parishes down the eastern side -Clifton Reynes, Emberton, Sherington, Chicheley, Hardmead, Astwood, North Crawley, Moulsoe, Broughton, Milton Keynes, Walton, Wavendon, and the Brickhills.

Seckloe Hundred  contains Bletchley, Bradwell, Calverton, Great Linford, Loughton, Newport Pagnell, Newton Longville, Shenley (part of), Simpson, Stantonbury, Stoke Hammond, Stony Stratford, Willen, Great and Little Woolstone, Wolverton and Woughton on the Green.

In the 13th century the hundreds were group together and subsequently known as the Newport Hundreds.

Milton Keynes today covers Seckloe Hundred and about one third of Moulsoe Hundred. In reality a much larger area is influenced by Milton Keynes' population of a quarter million

Inaugural

I started blogging about the history of my hometown, Wolverton, over two years ago. I hardly knew what I was doing when I began, nor indeed if anyone else would be interested. I did stick with it and there have been some consequences:
  • the readership has grown and continues to grow since I began to track it;
  • I have become more interested in my roots and in history generally
  • I have become more attracted to, maybe even addicted to blogging
Today I have decided to expand my interest to the whole North Bucks area and write what I can about it. When I was a boy the Milton Keynes area was still mostly rural, with a few small towns and even smaller villages and I could cycle along many of the country roads without meeting a car. Schools were very small and working on a farm was still a viable (if not very well paid) occupation.

In the last 50 years the transformation has been massive. I'm not going to sit in judgement, nor would I like to pretend that the time before Milton Keynes represented a kind of golden age. I have always been in favour of progress, so I am not going to start knocking it now.

However, our past is of interest, and in a perverse way the very creation of Milton Keynes has generated more interest in the past. I doubt whether Bancroft Villa, for example, would have been discovered if the area had been bypassed for development. my aim is to  record what I can about the pre-Milton Keynes era - a long time of course - everything up to 1970 will be included in this ragbag of musings.

The Wolverton Past blog will continue.