Two Mile Ash lies on the north-west edge of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, roughly two miles south of Stony Stratford and immediately west of Watling Street – the ancient Roman road now also designated the V4 grid road. The district takes its name directly from the old Twomile Ash Toll Gate that once stood on Watling Street, which became a turnpike during the early 17th century for the stretch between Hockliffe and Dunchurch. A 1559 map already shows the site as “Mile Ash”, marking a tree on a mound with Watling Street passing either side. By the 1885 Ordnance Survey six-inch edition, a building labelled “Twomile Ash” had appeared beside the road. A milestone survives on Watling Street to this day, with three ash trees planted by the Milton Keynes Parks Trust immediately behind it.
Layout and Local Streets
The main spine of Two Mile Ash is The High Street, with facilities and housing spreading off it. Three other principal roads – Church Hill, Clay Hill and Corn Hill – provide exits from the district, while Fairways road leads towards the Abbey Hill Golf Course. That course, an 18-hole layout, occupies a large portion of the district’s total area, with one half in Two Mile Ash and the other half in neighbouring Kiln Farm, connected by a footbridge over Monks Way. Because of this golfing presence, many local streets carry the names of famous golf courses around the world. Two Mile Ash was among the first districts built during the mainly private housing phase of Milton Keynes’s development, and it falls within the Abbey Hill civil parish.
History and Points of Interest
The area has deeper historical roots than its 1970s housing suggests. Two Mile Ash was originally within the lands of Bradwell Abbey, and a Romano-British farmstead was excavated on the northern edge of the golf course, close to the Mercure Hotel on Monks Way. A notable experiment from the mid-1980s also took place here: an energy evaluation project trialled super-insulated housing in Calewen, using 12 prefabricated timber houses built by Finlandia Construction in Finland. The scheme applied two to three times the insulation required by building regulations at the time, including 100mm foam injected under concrete floor slabs, and deliberately avoided passive solar design principles. These distinctive homes are still visible today. Two Mile Ash also has some shared ownership homes on the High Street, two schools, two pre-schools and three churches.