Milton Keynes, the new town

Milton Keynes is England's youngest city and one of its most talked about. Planned from scratch in 1967 as a new town to relieve pressure on London, it only gained official city status in 2022, for Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee. In northern Buckinghamshire, halfway between London and Birmingham, it now has more than 280,000 inhabitants across its borough and has grown faster than any other British city over the last fifty years. The British know it for its roundabouts, its grid roads and its famous concrete cows, and often mock it as a symbol of soulless modernity. Visitors, however, discover a city full of green space, with lakes, linear parks and millions of trees, and on its doorstep one of the most important places in 20th-century history: Bletchley Park, where the German Enigma codes were broken during the Second World War.

Trains from London Euston take just over half an hour, and Luton Airport is about half an hour away by car.

A city designed from scratch

In the 1960s the British government decided to build a series of new towns to house London's growing population, many of whom lived in overcrowded, war-damaged homes. In 1967 it chose an area of countryside in north Buckinghamshire that included the towns of Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford and some fifteen villages, one of them called Milton Keynes: a name that comes from an ancient "middle farmstead" and from the Norman de Cahaignes family, who held it in the Middle Ages, and not from the economist John Maynard Keynes, as many jokingly believe.

The planners of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation designed a city radically different from traditional ones, partly inspired by American cities: a grid of fast main roads, about a kilometre apart, enclosing residential districts called grid squares. At the junctions there are no traffic lights but roundabouts, more than a hundred of them, and along the roads run belts of trees and grass that hide the houses. For pedestrians and cyclists a separate network of more than 270 kilometres of paths was created, the redways, named after their reddish tarmac, which pass under the roads through underpasses and let you cross the city without ever meeting a car.

The concrete cows

The city's most famous and most mocked symbol is the Concrete Cows, a group of life-size concrete cows and calves made in 1978 by the American artist Liz Leyh, who was the new town's artist in residence. Intended as a farewell gift, they immediately became the target of pranks: they have been painted as zebras, dressed in pyjamas, beheaded and even kidnapped with a ransom demand. The originals are now kept at Milton Keynes Museum, while replicas are displayed in the city and along its green routes. For many Britons they remain an ironic portrait of the city; for residents they have become an affectionate emblem.

Bletchley Park and the Enigma codebreakers

In the south of the city, in the old railway town of Bletchley, stands Bletchley Park, a Victorian mansion of eccentric architecture bought in 1938 by the British secret services. During the Second World War thousands of people, most of them women, worked here in secret to intercept and decipher German, Italian and Japanese military communications. The most famous team was that of the mathematician Alan Turing, who designed the bombe, an electromechanical machine able to find each day's settings of the Enigma cipher machine. The intelligence gathered, codenamed Ultra, made a decisive contribution to victory in the Battle of the Atlantic and to the Normandy landings, and according to many historians shortened the war by at least two years.

The war in the Mediterranean also passed through here: in 1941 intelligence decrypted at Bletchley allowed the Royal Navy to surprise the Italian fleet at Cape Matapan, in Greece, in one of the Regia Marina's worst defeats. One of the key figures was a nineteen-year-old codebreaker, Mavis Lever, who specialised in Italian ciphers.

Everything remained secret for thirty years: many veterans died without ever telling their families what they had done during the war. Today Bletchley Park is a gripping museum, with the wooden huts where people worked, original Enigma machines, a rebuilt Turing bombe and exhibitions on the daily life of the codebreakers. If you want to know more, read the biography of Turing that inspired the film The Imitation Game, Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.

The National Museum of Computing

Next to Bletchley Park, but with a separate ticket, the National Museum of Computing holds a working rebuild of Colossus, the electronic computer built in 1944 to break messages from the German high command and considered one of the first programmable electronic computers in the world. The museum also displays the Harwell Dekatron, known as WITCH, the oldest original working digital computer, and a long history of computing up to the home computers of the 1980s, many of which you can still use.

What to see in Milton Keynes

The centre and its architecture

Central Milton Keynes is crossed by wide parallel avenues called boulevards. The main one, Midsummer Boulevard, was aligned, according to its planners, so that on the summer solstice the sun would rise at the end of the avenue, seen from the station. At its heart is Centre:MK, the large shopping building opened in 1979, a long glass and steel building inspired by the modernist architecture of Mies van der Rohe, with tree-lined arcades: in 2010 it was listed as a historic building, one of very few shopping centres in Europe with this protection. Nearby, the domed church of Christ the Cornerstone was the first purpose-built ecumenical church in a British city centre, shared by several Christian denominations.

MK Gallery and the theatre

MK Gallery, reopened in 2019 after an extension, is a contemporary art gallery with exhibitions of international standing and a large circular room overlooking the park. Next door is the Milton Keynes Theatre, one of the largest theatres outside London, which receives touring West End musicals, opera and ballet.

Campbell Park and the linear parks

Almost a quarter of the city's area is green. Behind the centre lies Campbell Park, a large hilly park with outdoor sculptures, an amphitheatre and views over the Grand Union Canal, which crosses the city with its painted boats. Along the valleys of the Rivers Ouzel and Great Ouse wind the linear parks, with lakes created to control flooding, woods and meadows, all linked by the redways. It is estimated that more than twenty million trees and shrubs have been planted in the city since it was founded.

Willen Lake and the Peace Pagoda

Willen Lake is the favourite place for walks, boating and water sports. On its northern shore rises the Peace Pagoda, a white Buddhist stupa inaugurated in 1980 by Japanese monks of the Nipponzan Myohoji order: it was the first peace pagoda built in the Western world. Around it are a monastery, a cherry garden and a circle of a thousand trees planted for peace. Not far away, the MK Rose is an open-air monument made of pillars arranged like the petals of a rose, on which dates important to the community are carved.

Xscape and entertainment

The large building shaped like an upturned sail in the centre is Xscape, an entertainment complex with an indoor ski slope using real snow, about 170 metres long, along with a climbing wall, a cinema and restaurants. For families there is also the Gulliver's Land theme park, designed for younger children.

The old villages

The older settlements survive inside the new city. Stony Stratford, on the Roman road of Watling Street, has a high street of Georgian houses and two old coaching inns, the Cock and the Bull: according to local tradition, travellers stopping here swapped such exaggerated tales that they gave rise to the English expression a cock and bull story. Great Linford has a 17th-century manor with a park and a medieval church, and Bradwell preserves the remains of a Benedictine priory. To the north, the small town of Olney is famous for its Shrove Tuesday pancake race, in which women run through the streets tossing a pancake in a frying pan, a tradition said to date back to 1445, and for the clergyman John Newton, a repentant former slave trader, who wrote the famous hymn Amazing Grace here.

A day in Milton Keynes

A possible itinerary: the morning at Bletchley Park, which deserves at least four hours, perhaps adding the National Museum of Computing. After lunch move to the centre to see Centre:MK, the concrete cows and MK Gallery, then cross Campbell Park to the canal. Late afternoon is perfect for a walk around Willen Lake to the Peace Pagoda. In the evening you can dine in Stony Stratford, among its historic inns, or go to the theatre. With a second day, hire a bike and explore the city on the redways.

Sport and motor racing

The city's football club, MK Dons, has a controversial history: it was born in 2004 from the relocation of Wimbledon FC from London to Milton Keynes, a decision that infuriated London fans, who founded a new club, AFC Wimbledon. Stadium MK also hosts concerts and rugby matches. Milton Keynes is a motor-racing capital too: the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team is based here, and the Silverstone circuit is about twenty kilometres away.

Around Milton Keynes

• Woburn Abbey and Safari Park, about fifteen kilometres away, with the home of the Dukes of Bedford and a large safari park.
• Silverstone, home of the Formula 1 British Grand Prix.
• The National Trust gardens at Stowe, among the most celebrated 18th-century English landscape gardens, with temples and lakes.
• Waddesdon Manor, a French-style château built by the Rothschilds in the 19th century.
• Oxford, about an hour by car, with its colleges, and Cambridge, about an hour and a quarter.
• The Grand Union Canal, to explore on foot or by bike along the towpath.

Living in Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes is one of the fastest-growing economies in Britain: it hosts the headquarters of large companies, banks, logistics firms, the Open University, the UK's largest university by student numbers, which teaches at a distance from its base at Walton Hall, and a lively tech sector. It was among the first cities in the world to use small six-wheeled robots to deliver groceries, which have been rolling along its pavements since 2018. Homes are cheaper than in London, green space is plentiful and neighbourhoods are quiet, but without a car getting around is difficult, the centre empties in the evening and many find the city lacking in character.

Getting there and getting around

• By train: from London Euston in just over half an hour on fast trains; direct services to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. Milton Keynes Central station is at the edge of the centre; Bletchley has its own station, a short walk from Bletchley Park.
• By air: Luton Airport is about half an hour away by car; Birmingham and Heathrow about an hour.
• By car: the city lies on the M1 motorway.
• In the city: distances are large and the city is designed for cars; alternatively there are buses, hire bikes and e-scooters, and the redways are perfect for cycling.

For travel around the rest of the country see trains and transport, and for other cities British cities.

Tips for your visit

• How long: one day for Bletchley Park and the centre; another for the parks, Woburn or Silverstone.
• Tickets: Bletchley Park tickets are valid for a year; the National Museum of Computing has a separate ticket.
• When to go: April to September for the parks and lakes; all year round for Bletchley Park.
• A tip: hire a bike and follow the redways from Campbell Park to Willen Lake: it is the best way to understand how the city was conceived.

Milton Keynes on the map

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