Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walton Hall is a district in Milton Keynes, in the English county of Buckinghamshire, and is the location of the campus and offices of the Open University. The campus covers 40 hectares and the first buildings were designed by Maxwell Fry & Jane Drew in 1969.
Together with the adjacent Walton district, it was anciently in the parish of Walton. The manor house (Walton Hall) that gives the district its name and the tiny parish church, now deconsecrated, are in the University's grounds. The historic hamlet of Walton is in the Walton Hall district but outside the grounds. The village farm-lands are divided between Walton Hall, the modern Walton, Kents Hill and Walnut Tree.
It is on the banks of the Ouzel, a tributary of the Great Ouse, where there a disused balancing lake has been naturalised and is home to reeds, bulrushes, reed warbler, reed bunting, water rail, sparrowhawk, kestrel, green woodpecker, grass snake and many varieties of odonata. Surrounding the reedbed are ponds and open water, ancient hedgerows and hay meadow.
