The
Metropolitan Line has three arms branching off in the west, and if
accommodating the Northern Line’s loops and branches had been a headache to
work out, then this would have been a migraine. I say would have been, because
the fact is that all bar one of the stations on the Uxbridge branch have
already been visited on the Piccadilly Line. This at least renders the task
feasible. My selected route involves starting at Chesham Station, and then
walking to Amersham station, which by all accounts should take between three
quarters of an hour and an hour. From Amersham by train to Rickmansworth, and a
30 minute bus ride and walk to Watford station. By train from Watford to Harrow
on the Hill, and then a fifteen minute or so walk from Harrow on the Hill
station to West Harrow Station. 14 stations in total, no station passed more
than once in the day, leaving a nice straight west – east run of 10 stations
from Northwick Park to Aldgate for the second trip. That’s the theory anyway.
As this promises to be a long day I make an early start outside Chesham. What I’d expected was a
countryfied station. I didn’t actually expect the station to have been built
inside a little dairyman’s cottage, though. At least that’s how it appears to
me. Google quickly informs me that this is both the westernmost and
northernmost of all London Underground stations, and immediately if rather
unfairly the T.S. Eliot line about ending not with a bang, but a whimper comes
to mind. A bit harsh that, since the station is the original building opened in
1889, and it wasn’t originally going to be the terminus, since the proposal was
to extend the line to Tring. That didn’t happen, but the branch was at least
retained.
Since Time’s
winged chariot is busily hurrying near, I strike out for Amersham. While doing
so, I make the decision that today’s tube mind game will be tube rhyming slang.
It does exactly what it says on the tin, that is, you take the name of a
station, and find an appropriate word or phrase which rhymes with it. Some
station names lend themselves to this rather better than others. Chesham and
Amersham, for example are better used for definitions. Chesham: (noun) Edible
plastic from which the filling of all British rail inter-city buffet car
sandwiches was made from February 1971 – August 2002. Amersham: (noun) Any
member of an Amateur Dramatic Society who claims to have been a member of the
National Youth Theatre, and turned down a scholarship at RADA.
Stations
like Chorleywood and Chalfont and Latimer work much better for rhyming slang,
as in Chorleywood – Not much good – Chalfont and Latimer – Whitbread, Fatima.
It’s all in the rhythm of the syllables, you see.
Once upon a time Amersham
was not actually the end of the Metropolitan line, as it stretched its way to
Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. It looks like another original station building,
but this one is much longer than Chesham. The canopies over the platforms have
a series of triangular roofs which look like the kind you see in old
photographs above the terraces of football grounds in the 1930s. I’ve rarely
seen these on station canopies. The whole thing looks just a little heavy, but
it’s interesting, and at least gives the station a distinctive quality.
While I’m waiting for the train to the next station, Chalfont and
Latimer, it occurs to me, that this name would also work for the definition
game. Chalfont and Latimer: (proper noun) Music Hall double act: aka “The Twin
Titians of Tomfoolery”. Chalfont and Latimer were very much a second division
music hall act, best appreciated by drunken audiences. Their stage act
consisted of cross talk and smutty jokes, including their little remembered “Don’t
tread on me dahlias, guv’nor” routine. However they rarely failed to please
with the finale of their act, a rousing chorus of the popular song “If you pay
me fare, you can take me up the Arsenal”’. Not knowing the area, I wonder if it
is close to Chalfont St. Giles. Google informs me that it is, as well as
Chalfont St. Peters. Since we’ve been talking about rhyming slang, I understand
why the station was never actually called Chalfont St. Giles, bearing in mind
the Cockney rhyming slang associations. The station itself looks to be
contemporary with Amersham, and I don’t doubt that it’s stood here since the
Metropolitan line first stretched this far. On a grey day the one storey
building looks a little dark and sombre, but it really wouldn’t take much to
give it the same Victorian country charm as other stations of the same vintage
– bright fresh paint around the windows and on the frames, a couple of troughs
full of flowers, some hanging baskets and a little bit of sunshine would work
wonders. The wooden posts supporting the porch above the entrance are very
nice, redolent of a Victorian vicarage for some reason.
Chorleywood is another station with the unusual triangular
vaulted roofs over the white canopies. I wonder if this was something which was
installed by the original national rail lines. The appearance of the exterior
of the station is pretty similar to Chalfont and Latimer, and it’s difficult to
find too much to say about it that I haven’t already said for the previous
station. It suffers a little by comparison with the posts holding up the porch.
They’re just not quite as nice – maybe not the original ones.
With my
opinions on the station itself quickly exhausted, I think about the line as a
whole. With its 34 stations it is a shadow of its former self. Since I first
moved away from London in the mid 80s, a section of what was the Metropolitan
declared UDI, or had UDI declared for it, to be rebranded as the Hammersmith
and City Line. I’ll maybe say more about that when we do part of the original
Metropolitan Railway which ran between Paddington and Farringdon from 1863, on
the next trip.
Bring a lover of Douglas Adams’ writing, the name Rickmansworth
is immovably bracketed with the words ‘a small café in’. If you’ve never read
the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series, well, basically in the opening to
the first novel, it is in a small café in Rickmansworth that a girl suddenly
realises how to sort out all the problems with life we poor humans face, but is
wiped out along with the rest of the Earth before she can tell anyone what it
is. In layout the station is pretty similar to Chorleywood and Amersham,
although the porch is a little more interesting, with its ornamental iron work.
You can’t really see it from the sketch, but there’s a watertower tacked onto
the right side of the station which backs onto the platform, and I guess it’s
been cleaned up recently, since it has beautiful brickwork.
To be fair,
I only have to wait about 10 minutes for the number 724 to Harlow which will
drop me about 15 minutes walk from Watford tube station. I have considered
walking the whole way, but that would take me a good hour, and at this stage of
the game banking half an hour seems a pretty good idea, especially since it’s
another grey and overcast day in Metroland. Once I get off the bus, a rather
pleasant thought occurs that despite the fact that the Metropolitan now
languishes well behind 4 other lines in terms of the number its number of
stations, the fact is that for all of that, not only was the Metropolitan
Railway the first ever underground railway, but the fact is that the word
‘metro’, used for many underground railway systems throughout the world, is
derived from the Metropolitan railway, via the French Metropolitain system.
Maybe, I muse, maybe this is why the
line is coloured an imperial purple on the map.
Watford
tube station was built in 1925, and to me is very, very Metroland. The idea of
Metro-Land, the move to entice people to move out of central London to settle
in Middlesex and Buckinghamshire along the western arms of the Metropolitan
Railway (later Line) was first dreamed up in 1915.
Having retained surplus land along the route
from the building of the lines, once the small issue of World War One had been
resolved they were able to go ahead developing housing. The Metropolitan was
unique in this respect, since other companies had not been allowed to retain
their surplus land. Metroland developments are characterised, and sometimes
satirised, for the tudor revival style of much of their original architecture,
and Watford station displays several of the characteristics of this style.
Wikipedia actually describes its style as “Arts and Crafts”, which is fair
enough, and I won’t argue against it. The architect was Charles Clark, who was
the Metropolitan Railway’s chief architect at this point – remember, the
Metropolitan Railway was still independent in 1925. It’s interesting to note
that, what with its columns it is just slightly – only slightly mind you –
reminiscent of some of the Stanley Heaps stations on the Edgware branch of the
Northern Line.
Charles Clark designed 25 stations, of which a number remain. Watford
is one of his listed buildings, as is our next station, Croxley. Although
by no means identical to Watford, it’s pretty much in the same idiom. Croxley
is so called after the local area, Croxley Green, and Wikipedia throws up this
fact that John Betjeman, poet laureate at the time, featured the revels on the
village green in his 1973 documentary on Metroland, called appropriately
“Metro-land”, where he rather waspishly described them as a tradition dating
back to 1952. Croxley, of course, is a prime candidate for the definition game,
and while I’m waiting for the train to Moor Park I come up with this: ‘Croxley
(plural noun) Technical term for the small pieces of polystyrene, shaped like
(although sadly not tasting like) Cheesy Wotsits, which certain online
retailers can’t make up their mind whether they wish to use as filler in
packaging or not. Dame Vivienne Westwood was once wrongly reported as
considering designing an Autumn collection manufactured from recycled Croxley.
‘
As the next
train pulls into
Moor Park station, I ransack my memory for any facts I
already know about the place, and all I can come up with is that Moor Park is
the home to a golf course which used to hold the Bob Hope pro-celebrity
tournament. There’s another thing. Bob Hope. I had always thought that Bob Hope
was born in Eltham. Then about 10 years ago I played in a quiz in Culverhouse
Cross in Cardiff, and when asked the question, the question master swore blind
he was born in a street in Barry. Gavin and Stacey and Bob? I think not. The
station building itself is something of a departure from the late Victorian
design ethic we’ve seen so far on this line. The current station was opened in
1961, and considering it dates back to that particular era, it really isn’t too
offensive at all. I’m guessing that this one came off the drawing board before
the clean, modernist lines of the best of 50s design were twisted into the ugly
brutalism of the worst of the 60s and 70s. I like the vertical wood panelling
cladding on the right hand side of the entrance.
Northwood station looks to have been built in the 60s as well,
but there the similarity to Moor Park ends. I doubt that there can be more than
a couple of years between them, but the appearance of Northwood suggests that
the rot had well and truly set in to the London Transport architectural design
department. Before this trip, I had no idea that this part of the Metropolitan
Line runs an express service. So when you’re sitting on the platform on what is
effectively the Metropolitan’s slow line, you have the unedifying experience of
seeing the fast trains zipping past on the fast lines, hell bent on Harrow on
the Hill.
Still, I don’t grieve over this, because if I’m to visit the next
station, Northwood Hills, then I’m in the right place. Thankfully this
is a 1933 original building, although this one doesn’t look so much like a
large Metroland house. When I google for some background information, I’m very
interested to see that the name was suggested by a member of the public as a
winning entry to a competition. This despite the area actually being at a lower
elevation than Northwood itself. I can understand the appeal of finding a name
through a competition. For one thing it’s a sight cheaper than giving a
commercial company a million quid to come up with a name like Consignia.
Remember that? No, and that’s part of the problem. Still, I just imagine what
the public would come up with now? Top entry would probably be Stationy
McStationface, with Suburban Craphole a close second.
I have to wait for another slow train to take me to
Pinner,
but I don’t mind so much, since to me, Pinner is undoubtedly London, while the
other stations I’ve so far visited today feel outside of London. The station
itself is far closer in layout to Chorleywood, although the chimneys may well
have been later additions since they’re much plainer. I can’t really put my
finger on this, put the station reminds me of a terrace of single storey former
miner’s houses on the road between Crynant and Seven Sisters in the South Wales
Neath Valley, which I used to pass when driving for quiz league matches against
the Seven Sisters Workingmen’s Club. The great Sir Elton John was born and grew
up in Pinner. I wonder if there is any kind of acknowledgement to the great man
in the station, but can’t see any. Maybe that’s an honour which is only granted
to people once they’ve passed on. Google confirms that this is in fact the
original station building from the 1880s.
The sun is well and truly over the yardarm now, so I eat my lunch and
contemplate the fact that there’s just the three Harrow stations to go to
complete this trip. First of these is North Harrow. The station building
is another Charles Clark station, but this is one of his stations that isn’t
currently a listed building, and you have to think that there’s a good reason
for this. It’s not served by building onto the side of a viaduct – and to be
fair tube stations are rarely improved by this. The square stone columns and
cornice just don’t work alongside he cast iron bridge structure. I’ll be
honest, it’s one of those stations which just doesn’t seem to offer much for
you to get your teeth into. Even the name which offers us the rhyming slang,
North Harrow – Giant Marrow/ the late Paul Darrow – doesn’t offer you that
much.
Harrow on the Hill – Viagra pill, I find slightly more
amusing. Originally the station was just called Harrow, which is fair enough
considering that it was the only Harrow station at the time. Echoing slightly
the situation with Northwood Hills, the station isn’t actually on Harrow Hill.
One source I read suggests that it was the headmaster of world famous Harrow
School, which counts luminaries such as Sir Winston Churchill among its
distinguished former pupils, who successfully protested against the station
being sited closer to the original centre of the town. Another old boy, who was
also a day boy, was Anthony Trollope. In his autobiography he tells of walking
from Harrow into the centre of London as quite a commonplace thing, a foot
journey which would at the least raise eyebrows today, not least because of the
convenient Metropolitan Line. The entrance is part of a modern parade of shops.
Research didn’t reveal exactly when it was built, but late 70s/80s would seem a
decent bet bearing in mind the appearance of the shops and the office block
adjoining.
For the third time on this single trip I strike out across country
again now, but it’s a mere step of 15 minutes to our final station of the day, West
Harrow. All the stations to Uxbridge which follow it are also on the Piccadilly
Line, and have already been bagged. It’s another of those stations which yields
very little from an internet search. So all I can rely on is my own impression.
From two thirds of the way down the orange and black brickwork, although not at
all fussy or ornate, looks authentically old, rather than the kind of brickwork
which just tries to look old. However from about two thirds of the way up to
the top of the gently sloping roof it looks like a much later addition. In
particular the central glazed section, though which the roof beams can be seen,
which at least has the function of breaking up the featureless nature of the
rest of the top of the building. I do rather like the look of the canopies over
the platforms, which slant gently upwards and are a little like the canopy
outside West Ruislip. Very 1950s.
----------------------------------------------------
So, 14 stations on this trip means that we’re
over halfway through the once-mighty Metropolitan line. 14 stations is by no
means the greatest number I’ve bagged in one trip, but then considering the
distances, the fact that I had three cross country sections, and the relatively
long intervals between trains stopping at the stations I wanted to stop at,
it’s certainly felt like one of the most strenuous trips I’ve had to make in
the whole challenge. The reward for all this effort, mind you, is that there’s
only 13 stations left between Northwick Park and Aldgate, and the bonus is that
I’ve already sketched three of them – Kings Cross, Moorgate and Liverpool
Street. The cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake is that from Baker
Street to Farringdon I’ll be riding the world’s first underground line, part of
the original line from Farringdon to Paddington
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