Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre

Posting this little fella from our Image Archive in the hopes of helping everyone feel a bit cooler before bed.

We're actually not sure where in MK this might have been. Anyone any ideas? It also doesn't have a date, but probably late '80s/early '90s.

📸 IMA/SA/1596

EAT Street MK is back at Bradwell Abbey TODAY with their Father’s Day BBQ event. The Friends of Bradwell Abbey are holding a plant sale, so you can grab some beautiful plants for your garden! All grown with love by volunteers in our community garden, come and grab a bargain whilst contributing to our preservation of the Scheduled Monument site of Bradwell Abbey and its listed buildings.

🕚 From 11am
📅 Sunday 21st June
📍 MK13 9AP, ///flies.trembles.observes

A big thank you to everyone who has given feedback on our Into the Grid project! If you’ve accessed our factsheets on Great Holm and/or Fullers Slade, please head over and give us some feedback. We’re looking to do more estates and it would be great to know what you liked and what could be improved.

▶ https://bit.ly/48dj33j

If you haven’t taken a look at the factsheets yet, then why not?! Find out some interesting things about where you live/near where you live/that place you drive past but have never been.

▶ https://www.mkcdc.org.uk/into-the-grid

EAT Street MK is back at Bradwell Abbey this Sunday with their Father’s Day BBQ event. The Friends of Bradwell Abbey will be holding a plant sale, so you can grab some beautiful plants for your garden! All grown with love by volunteers in our community garden, come and grab a bargain whilst contributing to our preservation of the Scheduled Monument site of Bradwell Abbey and its listed buildings.

🕚 From 11am
📅 Sunday 21st June
📍 MK13 9AP, ///flies.trembles.observes

Can’t make it to a site tour? Want to see inside the Chapel of St. Mary? You can watch a video tour on our YouTube channel! Filmed during conservation works in 2020, our Director Noël guides you through its history and some of the wall paintings.

▶ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAMhYIh3l8

No Mystery Monday today, but please peruse this image of a house with solar panels on it. Not unusual, you might think. But this house is on Harrowden, Bradville, and these solar panels are from 50 years ago.

They are pioneering panels, some of the first to utilise solar radiation for hot water and central heating. Milton Keynes Development Corporation worked with Steven Szokolay and the Built Environment Research Group at the Central London Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) to develop a system that was tested here, in a dwelling dubbed the 'Solar House'.

Don't you love our city?! Another example of Milton Keynes leading the way in sustainability!

📸 CUD/017, Solar roof - Bradwell [sic], Professor Brian Cudmore, 1980, © Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre

TODAY! Our free guided tour of Bradwell Abbey starts at 11am. Join us to discover more about Milton Keynes’ medieval hidden gem! From the priory's foundations in the 12th century to its dissolution and beyond, our experienced guides will show you the site and you can see inside the Chapel of St. Mary.

📆 Sunday 14th June
🕚 11am
📍 Bradwell Abbey, MK13 9AP w3w ///flies.trembles.observes

Guided Tour @ Bradwell Abbey

Early proposals for the infrastructure of city footpaths across Milton Keynes suggested they should be colour coded and use signposts of the appropriate colour. These signposts would carry pictorial symbols representing the main features, some of which we’ve posted here.

The Infrastructure proposals were created in the early 1970s and published in a 1972 booklet. The proposals were a collaboration between the Milton Keynes Development Corporation and Butler Isherwood Bartlett, an industrial design firm (better known as BIB) that was established in 1967 and became one of the world leaders in its field for the next three decades.

These city footpath proposals evolved into what we know today as the redway, the pedestrian and cycle network with its red tarmac, yellow bollards and blue directional signs familiar to us all.

We look after these original proposal booklets in our reference library, if you’d like to come and look at anything in our archive and reference library then follow the link in our profile!

Which is your favourite?

A – Direction arrows
B – Open spaces
C – Hospital
D – British Rail station
E – Canal and rivers
F – Built up areas
G – School
H – Industrial development
J – Existing villages

We are sorry to announce that our '90s Disco that was due to take place this evening has had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. We apologise to ticketholders and they will be fully refunded. We hope to see you at another event at Bradwell Abbey soon!