A Medieval house lies behind this more modern seeming brickwork. This is 12 and 14 Station Road.

This is Ivinghoe, a small town at the foot of the Chilterns and the location of today’s Secrets of… Walk. The total length of this walk is three quarters of a mile, and you can park in the High Street by the Town Hall, or on Station Road opposite The King’s Head. In Station Road at least, there are no time limits or charges.

Station Road

Your first stop is 12 and 14 Station Road, just down from the pub. This building is far older than it appears, having been built in the late 13th or early 14th Century as an aisled hall. Inside it would have originally been open to the roof; only later was a first floor installed.

There was no chimney until the central stack was inserted in the 16th Century, and the building was either encased or perhaps replaced with brick in the 17th Century.

This brass plaque on the churchyard wall marks the crowning of Edward VII in 1902. I think the way the vicar, and the chairman and clerk of the parish council all having their names on the plaque is a bit vainglorious!

Okay, it's all my fault. I drove to Ivinghoe last week to take the photos for this week's Secrets of... guided walk, and when I arrived I found there was no memory card in the camera! I should have checked before I left. The card was at home 20 miles away, in my computer's card reader.

It's been cloudy ever since, right up to the middle of Thursday afternoon when the post should have been out Thursday morning! I drove out there again and got my photos in the sunshine, and got back from Ivinghoe just after 7 pm. I've been working on the post today and it should be up tomorrow now.

Meanwhile, I'm now carrying a memory card in my wallet, just in case. At some point I'll be putting a spare card in every camera bag (there's four) to make doubly sure. I prefer the smaller 16 GB cards, enough for about 300 photos in the big RAW file type I prefer. These days, a 16GB card is amazingly cheap and  there seems little point in getting anything smaller.

While you are waiting, here's a couple of shots I liked but couldn't fit into the Ivinghoe post.

The King's Head, Ivinghoe. This large building at the centre of the town is partly Medieval, but largely 16th or 17th Century.

Stony Stratford is well known for its live music scene, though I haven’t seen a band playing there (or anywhere else) since before the lockdown began, all those months ago.

I miss it, so when I heard live music coming from round the corner in the High Street, I walked over to see what was going on. This is what I found; three real, live musicians; “Doctor Jazz”. It was great.

The Monday Photo

This is one of the original street lights designed for Milton Keynes. Part of a complete system of street furniture for the new town, lights like these began to be installed in the new estates around 1975. This one is in Woughton on the Green.

This is the type used on smaller estate roads, so it has a square brown column with a globular lantern on top. There were several designs; all pretty similar on the outside, but with various different internals.

Main estate roads had globe lights too, but they were mounted on an arm that stuck out sideways from the square brown column.

To produce a cohesively designed town, in 1978 the Milton Keynes Development Corporation produced a brochure with diagrams and plans for lighting, signs, bus shelters and seating. Everything was designed to be durable with easy maintenance.

One design example is MKDC’s park bench. All steel and painted black, it has a single tube at each end, bent to form the legs and the end of the seat and backrest. A single sheet of perforated metal stretches between the tubes to form the rest of the bench. The thousands of round holes means the seat will not hold rainwater.

As you travel around Milton Keynes, keep an eye out for the street furniture that was part of the original new town. There’s still quite a lot of it.

Once a shoe factory, then a WW2 shadow factory, now flats.

Part Two of Two

The town of Olney, often pronounced “Ohney” lies on the River Great Ouse. There’s been a river crossing here for a long time, and a minor Roman road crossed the river about where the modern bridge lies.

There’s plenty of free parking. In the car park in the middle of the Market Place there’s a three hour limit, but on the roads around there it’s just an hour. Away from the Market Place there’s no time limit on the High Street.

Olney has a great many old buildings, but I’ve just picked out the ones I found most interesting. I’ve divided the town up into two walks, both about a mile and a quarter long. The first Olney walk was published here last week.

Olney's town sign, in the Market Place.

Part One of Two

The town of Olney, pronounced “Ohney” by many locals, lies on the River Great Ouse. There’s been a river crossing here for a long time, and a minor Roman road crossed the river about where the present bridge lies. It’s the home of the yearly Olney Pancake Race.

There’s plenty of free parking in the town. In the middle of the Market Place there’s a three hour limit, but on the roads nearby it’s just an hour. Away from the Market Place there’s no time limit on the High Street.

Olney has a great many old buildings, but I’ve just picked out the ones I found most interesting. I’ve divided the walk up into two halves, both about a mile and a quarter long. The second half of the guided walk will be published here next week.