Simon English
England Revisited

On a tree on the left of the road as you join A5 from Far Bletchley. 1/2 mile east of Shenley Church End.

On a field maple in the same hedge on the north side of the same lane as the flag was in 1971. Then the land around Shenley Church End was open fields. In the years since all that has disappeared under houses, concrete, block paving, roundabouts and tar macadam that is the ever expanding Milton Keynes.

Benign urban planning has allowed much of the original village buildings to remain with modern detached houses, built with gardens, in comfortable estates in each field.

I was expecting point 53 to have long disappeared with all this development, however by superimposing two old maps on one modern one I was amazed to work out that the old farm road that joined the roman road of Watling Street still existed. Although it now survives as a series of linked cul de sacs with ‘light’ linked names that would not be out of place in a 1960’s sci-fi film, namely Angstrom Close, Laser Close, Krypton Close & Trevithick Lane

Arriving on site I find that, although the road is now surfaced in concrete block paving and has modern bollards and streetlights, that the original farm ditch and hedge are still there with its variety of hedgerow trees:- ash, elm, oak, elder, sloe, field maple, blackthorn, hawthorn and hazel. Into this, inevitably, some suburban invasion has occurred by design or neglect:- privet, cherry laurel and lleylandii, but it is a delight to find this vestige of a previous age preserved by deliberate benign planning in this futuristic town. This may have been a luxury of thirty years ago, as the town expands to the west the houses being built now, with price of land and building the way it is, are so tightly packed that though visually detached they are all but the terraces of the towns that the original inhabitants escaped from.
Points 53 & 59