Victorian Tour

Aerial View

This photo, taken in the 1968, shows the village of Willen as it was before the development of Milton Keynes. It looks very much as it must have done since the middle of the 1800s, comprising a church, vicarage, two farms and a cluster of about a dozen cottages and some farm buildings set in the midst of rolling fields and pastures.

Cambridge University Collection of Air Photographs: copyright reserved

However, there are a few clues to its more recent date: there is a road bridge over the river where before there was a ford; there are cars on the road. You can just make out the odd telegraph pole and a telephone box close to where one still stands today. There are also clues to a much more distant past: most of the hedges date from the 1600s, the ridge and furrow pattern in the pastures are remnants of medieval strip farming, the cluster of trees just to the right of where the road crosses the river was where the medieval moat is still to be found.

Today, the same area looks very different.