Giffard Park
We currently live in Giffard Park in Milton Keynes and our house backs onto the Grand Union Canal which runs the length of Giffard Park. We live in Rothersthorpe which was originally built by a self build group in the 1980’s. It was originally set up by a self build consultancy called Rothers; hence the street name. When this group started I worked with the wife of one of the original group members and heard all about it from them. When one of their group dropped out I applied to replace him but I was unsuccessful because they needed another bricklayer and I had no building skills. I was disappointed so I tried to start my own group up using timber frame kits and it wasn’t long before I started meetings with the MK Development Corporation. My chosen house was called, “The 
Anerby Hus” which was a 4 bedroom detached Scandinavian kit that even included the skirting boards but unfortunately the Development Corporations representative was not as enthusiastic about it as me. I wanted to start a group of around 8 people building 8 houses in a small group in what is now Downhead Park as a small patch of land was available there at the time, but I had lots of resistance from the Corporation and was told that the Anerby Hus kit would never be used in Milton Keynes. Around this time Rothers was starting a new group of about 18 houses at the other end of Giffard Park and they wrote to me as I had expressed an interest to them.
I abandoned my battle with MKDC in favour of the ready made self build group and had advice from my friend on the other group when the meetings started. He said that if you volunteer early on to be on the committee you are guaranteed a place which was excellent advice as around 100 people were at the first meeting. I was advised to volunteer for the time keeper’s role as it was the easiest and least time consuming so when it was announced I was the only volunteer. When they asked for a volunteer for the Secretary, many of the gatherings shouted for the school teacher to take this place. The school teacher turned out to be Chris, Harriet’s Dad, although Harriet was yet to be born. Chris took this position and was therefore automatically in the group as was I as the time keeper but Chris, not only worked full time but he was doing his honours degree via correspondence through Bedford college in his diminishing spare time. He agreed to be the secretary initially but would 
hand it over once the work actually started. When the work did start Chris kept his word and handed the Secretary’s job over to me as I was the only one in the group with a computer, and I handed my time keepers job over to Len Chalmers who used to play football for Leicester City. He was very big friends with Gordon Banks at the time as he was a full back and played alongside Gordon in the run up to the 1966 world cup final but was carried off with a broken leg before the actual final with Germany.
It was hard work building 18 houses in your spare time and having the secretaries job made it even worse. It used to take me around 30 minutes a day just opening and reading the post without responding to it. The quickest way was to respond by telephone wherever possible and only writing letters where absolutely necessary even though I had my BBC microcomputer. The work lasted around 20 months and wasn’t without its problems, in fact it almost finished before it had properly got started. We rented a farm barn at the beginning so that we could manufacture the timber frame components on the bench with electric circular saws. Once we had made enough components for a complete house we had a dry run on the farm to erect the bits into a house. This happened to be on a Saturday and we found that none of the components fitted together, each side when added together came to a different length and the whole thing tapered inwards like a wigwam. We headed off to the actual building site to measure up all the over sites that were available and took an average dimension each way. Chris phoned up Rothers and left an angry message lasting 30 
minutes long and didn’t stop talking until the tape stopped. I went home and sat at my drawing board in the conservatory until the early hours redesigning all the timber frame components. By the morning I had printable transparencies which I could show to Simon Templar (The Saint as we called him) who was Rothers full time architect and had driven down on the Sunday morning. The timber frame design was done by a chap that I can’t remember his name but we called him “Popeye” because he had his pipe firmly between his teeth at the side of his mouth. Simon Templar was a good architect and had all our respects and wasn’t the greatest fan of Popeye anyway. He looked over my drawings and suggested that I left a little more clearance than I had allowed so I adjusted a few dimensions and we built a new set of components which actually worked. In face all 18 houses were built to my designs. After a struggle we did manage to get financial compensation from Rothers and they fired Popeye but not before Simon Tempar had already left the company saying that it was “him or me”.
Although the self build almost collapsed at the start it ended being a great success and we all learnt a huge amount in the process. I got my old photographs down from the Attic on Monday and we have been going through some of them. I couldn’t get the scanner working to digitise them so have taken photos of some of them but they have not come out great. The one with the caravan in it has a sign that I made and hand painted to save money. We bought the field and even had to put the main road and services in ourselves. We did have contractors to do the heavy work but we laid all the surface bricks ourselves. One of our guys, “Ernie” had his own JCB which was very useful and saved lots of
time and effort, especially in bad weather. I have also included a couple of photos inside our house when it was finished. The white house near the end is the one across the road from the self build that Chris and Claire bought after they sold their self build house. I have also included one of the old people’s houses that is just down the street which might be our next place of residence.
You might be seeing some of the other old pictures from the attic if I can ever get this scanner to work. The very last picture is of the 8 Anerby Hus houses built on Downhead Park shortly after we finished our self build; I wonder where they got the idea from?
We currently live in Giffard Park in Milton Keynes and our house backs onto the Grand Union Canal which runs the length of Giffard Park. We live in Rothersthorpe which was originally built by a self build group in the 1980’s. It was originally set up by a self build consultancy called Rothers; hence the street name. When this group started I worked with the wife of one of the original group members and heard all about it from them. When one of their group dropped out I applied to replace him but I was unsuccessful because they needed another bricklayer and I had no building skills. I was disappointed so I tried to start my own group up using timber frame kits and it wasn’t long before I started meetings with the MK Development Corporation. My chosen house was called, “The 
Anerby Hus” which was a 4 bedroom detached Scandinavian kit that even included the skirting boards but unfortunately the Development Corporations representative was not as enthusiastic about it as me. I wanted to start a group of around 8 people building 8 houses in a small group in what is now Downhead Park as a small patch of land was available there at the time, but I had lots of resistance from the Corporation and was told that the Anerby Hus kit would never be used in Milton Keynes. Around this time Rothers was starting a new group of about 18 houses at the other end of Giffard Park and they wrote to me as I had expressed an interest to them.
I abandoned my battle with MKDC in favour of the ready made self build group and had advice from my friend on the other group when the meetings started. He said that if you volunteer early on to be on the committee you are guaranteed a place which was excellent advice as around 100 people were at the first meeting. I was advised to volunteer for the time keeper’s role as it was the easiest and least time consuming so when it was announced I was the only volunteer. When they asked for a volunteer for the Secretary, many of the gatherings shouted for the school teacher to take this place. The school teacher turned out to be Chris, Harriet’s Dad, although Harriet was yet to be born. Chris took this position and was therefore automatically in the group as was I as the time keeper but Chris, not only worked full time but he was doing his honours degree via correspondence through Bedford college in his diminishing spare time. He agreed to be the secretary initially but would 
hand it over once the work actually started. When the work did start Chris kept his word and handed the Secretary’s job over to me as I was the only one in the group with a computer, and I handed my time keepers job over to Len Chalmers who used to play football for Leicester City. He was very big friends with Gordon Banks at the time as he was a full back and played alongside Gordon in the run up to the 1966 world cup final but was carried off with a broken leg before the actual final with Germany.
It was hard work building 18 houses in your spare time and having the secretaries job made it even worse. It used to take me around 30 minutes a day just opening and reading the post without responding to it. The quickest way was to respond by telephone wherever possible and only writing letters where absolutely necessary even though I had my BBC microcomputer. The work lasted around 20 months and wasn’t without its problems, in fact it almost finished before it had properly got started. We rented a farm barn at the beginning so that we could manufacture the timber frame components on the bench with electric circular saws. Once we had made enough components for a complete house we had a dry run on the farm to erect the bits into a house. This happened to be on a Saturday and we found that none of the components fitted together, each side when added together came to a different length and the whole thing tapered inwards like a wigwam. We headed off to the actual building site to measure up all the over sites that were available and took an average dimension each way. Chris phoned up Rothers and left an angry message lasting 30 
minutes long and didn’t stop talking until the tape stopped. I went home and sat at my drawing board in the conservatory until the early hours redesigning all the timber frame components. By the morning I had printable transparencies which I could show to Simon Templar (The Saint as we called him) who was Rothers full time architect and had driven down on the Sunday morning. The timber frame design was done by a chap that I can’t remember his name but we called him “Popeye” because he had his pipe firmly between his teeth at the side of his mouth. Simon Templar was a good architect and had all our respects and wasn’t the greatest fan of Popeye anyway. He looked over my drawings and suggested that I left a little more clearance than I had allowed so I adjusted a few dimensions and we built a new set of components which actually worked. In face all 18 houses were built to my designs. After a struggle we did manage to get financial compensation from Rothers and they fired Popeye but not before Simon Tempar had already left the company saying that it was “him or me”.
Although the self build almost collapsed at the start it ended being a great success and we all learnt a huge amount in the process. I got my old photographs down from the Attic on Monday and we have been going through some of them. I couldn’t get the scanner working to digitise them so have taken photos of some of them but they have not come out great. The one with the caravan in it has a sign that I made and hand painted to save money. We bought the field and even had to put the main road and services in ourselves. We did have contractors to do the heavy work but we laid all the surface bricks ourselves. One of our guys, “Ernie” had his own JCB which was very useful and saved lots of
time and effort, especially in bad weather. I have also included a couple of photos inside our house when it was finished. The white house near the end is the one across the road from the self build that Chris and Claire bought after they sold their self build house. I have also included one of the old people’s houses that is just down the street which might be our next place of residence.
You might be seeing some of the other old pictures from the attic if I can ever get this scanner to work. The very last picture is of the 8 Anerby Hus houses built on Downhead Park shortly after we finished our self build; I wonder where they got the idea from?
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