9. Rainbow Words and Music by Lyn Dawes and Neil Mercer[1]
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The London Gazette of 19th June 1858 (left) describes a problem facing the London & North Western Railway Company: they needed more housing in Wolverton for the workers in their burgeoning Works but could acquire no more land there. However, just a mile down the road was the parish of Stantonbury, then the property of the Earl Spencer of Althorpe in Northamptonshire. The purchase of this land created New Bradwell – or Stantonbury Village as it was also known.
Spencer Street once ran parallel to the full length of New Bradwell’s High Street. Here the houses, standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’, showed the hierarchical and ordered nature of Victorian industrial society: the small two-storey terraces were for the workers, with the three-storey pavilion end-terraces for the foremen. Each plot was 8 x 16 yards (7m x 15m) – thought to be very spacious. Fireplaces were set in one corner with the cooking range in the kitchen, This was to be black-leaded every morning, with the hearth whitened, the front step scrubbed, the pavement washed, the front room fireplace polished with Brasso, and the steel fire-irons rubbed with emery paper. In 1975, the Spencer Street railway cottages were listed Grade III and subject to a public enquiry - though only after most of the street - along with all the Bridge Street cottages - had been demolished. Just one last small section of 24 terraced houses survived. They were purchased by Milton Keynes Development Corporation and restored in 1978. They later became known as the Rainbow Housing Co-operative (hence the title of the song)[1]. The Co-operative aimed to provide communal facilities for its residents - such as a meeting space, an office, laundry facilities, a workshop equipped with tools, a deep freeze, domestic equipment and a greenhouse. Today, this leafy pedestrianised street stands as testament to how old properties can become beautiful modern homes, and how bad decisions on demolition cannot be retracted. As Geoff Lines said on leaving his home in Bridge Street: ‘It was lovely in them little streets…’ [1] Listen to the 1994 digital performance supplied on this webpage with Marion Hill and Sue Malleson [2]The transcript of a resident’s interview about living in the Rainbow Housing Co-operative is on Living Archive’s website: Interview with Moss Bancroft - Living Archive |
Spencer Street
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