To Metro-land!
By: Caroline Jordan
Tags: London Underground, Public Transit, London

Thus began the selling of “Metro-land,” a dream of the best of both the city and the countryside at once. The middle-class worker could now have that prestigious job in the city and come home to a quiet countryside retreat at the end of the day, with plenty of space and greenery to spare. The Met had accidentally invented British suburbia; complete with the UK’s version of the American “white picket fence” dream.

It goes without saying that this sales campaign was successful — I’d hardly be writing about it right now if it wasn’t. There was something very appealing about the idea of an idyllic green countryside to Londoners who’d been living for years in the cramped and dirty urban conditions. Demand for Metro-land only increased after the end of the first World War in 1918, concurrent with an increase in interest in the “green and pleasant land” and romanticism of a past English lifestyle as an antidote to the trauma of the trenches and the horrors of war. This trend only continued (and still does continue) as decades passed and what constituted “London” expanded, leaving people looking further and further out for those “wide-open spaces” and “rural lifestyle.” Onward to Metro-land, indeed.

I will admit that I have had difficulty finding a large amount of academic, research-based sources to draw upon for this project. Studies that I have been able to find regarding the London underground focus mostly on data about the way people use transport. For example, take a 2009 study in the Journal of Transport and Land Use: “Mode Choice of Older People Before and After Shopping: A Study with London Data.” This study includes exactly what the title suggests- it’s an examination of how older people in London choose to travel when they go out shopping. Other studies like “Exploring changes in public transport use and walking following residential relocation: A British case study,” also in the Journal of Transport and Land Use, and “Computing Passenger Miles in London Transport” in the Journal of Transport Economics and Policy both deal with the physical way passengers use transport, but don’t delve heavily into the way people experience transport. Overall, the vast majority of academic pieces on London Transport seem to be about the physical hardware of the system- how buses and trains physically operate, and how effective they are at doing so, and other similar areas. Few pieces attempt a sociological or ethnographic approach to how London Transport is used, and almost none deal specifically with the Metropolitan line.

So in order to find background on the Met, I’ve had to look toward some more unconventional sources. Perhaps the best research-based source on the Met that I’ve been able to find, and one that I have drawn heavily upon for the purposes of describing the history of the line as can be seen in the footnotes, is a book called The Metropolitan Line: London’s First Underground Railway by Clive Foxell. This work is a definitive history of the Metropolitan line and details it’s specific history, especially in the early days of the railway. I can’t overstate the benefits of this source in furthering my understanding of the Met. While sparse on critical analysis, this book’s detailing of how Metro-land came to be were crucial to my later revelations while riding the Met.

If Foxell’s book provided the heart of the historical basis for this paper, then the work that provided the metaphorical heart was Richard Mabey’s book A Good Parcel of English Soil. Mabey also heavily references the history of the Met according to Foxell’s book (it really is the definitive source), but he gets into what the Met represents on more of the non-physical, fanciful scale. A Good Parcel of English Soil is a love-letter to Metro-land and the green vales of the Chiltern, yet Mabey also heavily criticised this world and gets to the heart of what is wrong with it. He captures the mysticism of the world that originally drew me to the Metropolitan line by describing his own childhood there, a way of life that seems too good to be true.

If there’s any one point to be gained from Mabey’s work, it’s that Metro-land is a certain state of mind. One can’t understand the contradiction of the Met by only studying the facts and figures of it.

Set of classic Metro-land posters

It was always clear to me from the beginning that the only way I was truly going to get a feel for the Met line was by riding it myself. I had done so once before, on a university-sponsored trip out to Chorleywood to take a hike in the Chilterns, but at that time I was more concerned with the fact that I’d had to get up before 9am to meet up with the group to really appreciate the Met. Even so, I think that first introduction into the myth of the English Countryside and the romanticism of the Chilterns wasn’t completely lost me. Although I don’t know if I could exactly put my finger on it at the time, I could see that there was something special here, something the transcended simply the physical geography of the place and the hour and a half journey on the train. It was for this reason that the most logical research method for me to take was an ethnological approach, at least for what I was hoping to discover. I knew there was only so much I could learn from books and museums about the history of London transport or sets of data on the Met.

I also realized that I was unlikely to find out the information I was searching for by doing something like interviewing people riding the line either. First of all, I knew my social anxiety would absolutely prohibit me from approaching strangers on the Tube to ask them what they thought of the Met line and why they were riding it. Second and more importantly, I realized that these commuters were unlikely to share the same romantic and metaphysical inclinations I had about the line. For them, this was simply a commute, a means of transportation. They were unlikely to want to talk to me about the myth of Metroland or the mental delineation between city and country. And all of that is without mentioning the fact that I would simply be doing myself a disservice by focusing only on the people riding the train. They, after all, are only one part of the system that makes up the Metropolitan line. An important part, yes, but not the only part.

Thus I found myself on the Met, sandwiched between some commuters while clutching my notebook and pen and the collection of snacks I’d picked up from WHSmith for my ride. Although I had the intention to write down notes about what I was seeing as I went, I immediately ran into the problem of the fact that in such close quarters, those sitting next to me could easily see what I was writing, which was a no-go for my anxiety. I didn’t want to appear creepy or as if I was a stalker. Observing people around me was an absolute must however — ethnography is defined as “the study of social interactions, behaviours, and perceptions that occur within groups, teams, organisations, and communities,” so looking around and taking note of the way people were interacting with the environment of the Met was a core component of what I was hoping to find out. During the course of my investigation, however, I found myself to be taking the ethnographic approach in a different direction- one where I not only looked at the people but “the nature (that is, sights, sounds) of the location they inhabit.”

I started my journey on the Underground up at Archway station in Northwest London, close to where I live, and then take the Northern line down to Kings’ Cross/St. Pancras International. That was the first point at which the Metropolitan and Northern lines met and I could cross over to the actual focus of my investigation. I’ll begin first by saying that the Met is a very different experience from the Northern line. The Northern is cramped and dark, spanning most of the distance of London from north to south entirely underground as a deep-level Tube line. The carriages are small and hot, with barely enough room to stand up properly. Overall, black is a very fitting color for the Northern line to be represented as in the Tube maps.

Baker Street station is one of the few Central-London Tube stations where the Met line stops

The Met is a little different. Although a good portion of the line in central London is underground, from Finchley Road onwards it’s wide-open skies. The line sails past the arches of Wembley stadium out into the Chilterns, where rolling hills overtake the scenery and it feels hard to fathom that one is only a few miles outside of London, which I suppose is very much the point. The physical hardware of the Met is even different — the carriages are so large and spacious that feeling cramped is almost unheard of. There’s standing room to spare, and places for luggage, prams, and any other assorted paraphernalia. Every other carriage has a couple of bench seats, some facing forward, others facing backwards; a feature which is more akin to an actual National Rail train than something on the Tube. Logically, it does make sense, as the Met was originally intended as a commuter train similar to the lines that would later become part of the National Rail.

Until about Wembley Park station, most of the inhabitants of my train are diverse — a healthy mix of young and old, a variety of ethnicities, as well as a good amount of construction workers in orange jumpsuits and quite a few people toting suitcases. The train is still filled with people mostly using it as an in-between, just waiting to transfer to another line at a different station. In short, it’s more of a typical London Underground crowd rather than a group of long distance commuters. There are many people getting on and off at each station, and it’s all underground. Between each station is only a void of black and the haunting screeching of the wheels on the tracks.

However, by Wembley the situation has changed. A great deal of people filter out, leaving only a few remaining passengers sitting in various places around the train, although it’s not empty by any means. From Finchley Road to Wembley Park, the train interestingly enough moves very fast and doesn’t stop at all, blowing past several above-ground stations that it could have easily stopped at. Curious, I googled the answer to why the Met line doesn’t stop at any of the intermediary stations between Finchley Road and Wembley Park, but it didn’t seem like the internet knew either. Some online commenters on a railway message board suggested that it was because the Met and Jubilee lines use different signaling protocols on that stretch, but the best answer I could find and also the one which made the most sense in my mind was that the Met doesn’t stop here for speed purposes.

The Met line is built for speed and distance, much more like a National Rail train than a subway

Indeed, if the Met is intended as a commuter train, ferrying people from the Chilterns into the city, speed is key. The Metropolitan line is actually the fastest line of the entire system, reaching speeds of 50/60mph. In order to stay competitive with National Rail services, with whom the Met actually shares track with for stations west of Wembley, the Met must offer cheap(ish) prices without compromising too much speed. It’s not that the Met couldn’t stop at any of the stations it bypasses in Zone 3, but more that the Met stops at so many stations already on its long journey into the center of the city that any station which is not absolutely vital and is serviced by another line can be excluded from the Met’s route to save a bit of time. And for the commuters coming from the ends of the lie, who already have to dedicated hours of their day to this venture, any bit of time saved is likely appreciated.

Perhaps what surprised me most is the amount of people who remained on the train for the whole way, or at least a significant portion of it. I had figured that I would be the only one, but with every stop that passed on the journey out to the end I was shocked at how little interchange there actually was. The train would stop, but very few people would get on or off. I also noticed that at many of the stations further out, there would often be large car parks or bike racks in or near the stations.

It reminded me of my experiences with public transport back home in both Philadelphia and Denver — at regional rail stations there would be huge parking lots within walking distance due to the fact that most of the people using public transport away from the centers of the cities did actually have cars, but simply found it easier to “park and ride” in order to not have to drive and park in congested urban areas. I suspect that a similar situation is in play here. It’s the essence of Metroland at it’s finest — the idea that one could work and play in the city, and then take the train home and drive away at the end of the day. It’s the urban experience for those who aren’t really urban at all. Because really, that’s what the Met is all about. It’s a lie; an arrogant presumption that one can have the best of both worlds.

Historic map showing proposed Met line extensions to service smaller communities in the Chilterns

As I would look around the train on my journeys out and back again, I would always be struck by the beauty of the landscape. The subtle and gradual shift from urban metropolis to rural countryside made for a compelling backdrop to the lives of the people camped out on this train. But what soured the views of the green hills rolling by, interspersed by woods full of towering trees and dappling sunlight, was the knowledge that this Metro-land was merely a creation, something manufactured just so the railroad could stay alive and generate customers.

The Chiltern towns like Chesham and Amersham may have a needle tapped into one of the main arteries of one of the biggest and most important cities in the world, but they are not part of it. They are an addition, an afterthought, attached to the rest of the city by artificial means in order to satisfy the desire of the well-off who want the convenience of the city without any of its problems. They are an aberration in the system.

I’ve mentioned before that Richard Mabey’s book A Good Parcel of English Soil is perhaps the most influential work I read in regards to the nature of my own project. He notes that in the years of the Met in the early 20th century, “the company was perfectly positioned not just physically to transport workers between the city and the country, but to sell them and entire rural dream…it would build rose-wreathed cottages that would tempt commuters to live outside London and therefore be in need of the company’s trains to get home: the market as Mobius strip.”

This notion is still alive and well today- exhibit number one, the car parks surrounding the stations. These days, it’s not that the people who live out in the far reaches of the Met line have no way to get into the city other than the train. They could fairly easily drive, if they wanted. But instead the Met offers the convenience of an easy way into the city and back.

Yet it’s not just that. It’s the very feeling of the idea that all of the suburbs out beyond Finchley Road only exist in part because people were sold the notion of a dream. Metro-land, the countryside retreat — these are London’s version of the “white picket fence” ideal that was sold to many Americans at about the same time. It left me feeling dirty, in a way. I could no longer truly enjoy the journey because it was dirtied with the stains of capitalism and the knowledge that all of this was only a manufactured dream.

Because of the Metropolitan line, the gorgeous Chiltern Hills are easily accessible to Londoners who want to get out of the city and explore the nature around them

The problem, for me at least, lies in the fact that one cannot manufacture something to be truly authentic. The two, by their very nature, cancel each other out. I’ll use the architecture of my home school Arcadia University’s Glenside campus for example — on the campus, there is a building called Grey Towers Castle. By appearance, it looks almost exactly like what one might picture a medieval, fantasy castle to look like: turrets, spires, great towers of stone, etc. But it was built in 1893. In the United States of America. There is nothing remotely authentic about this castle. It cannot be truly authentic if it was designed to be that way.

Metro-land and the world of the Chilterns is much the same way. The swaths of Tudor-style villas surrounding the Met were built in the 1930s, not the 1500s. Chesham and Amersham can never be true countryside because the very fact of their connection to the city prohibits it. For heaven’s sake, the Met out to Watford Junction can even be considered a truly authentic commuter line for those living outside the city due to the thousands of tourists who use it as a by-way to get up to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour or to head out for a day hike in the Chilterns. The Met tries to encapsulate too many contradictory concepts — city and country, local and tourist, fiction and reality, London and Not — that it makes it impossible for it to be authentically either. Not even the Met can change the fact that there are some worlds on which two cannot be part of at the same time in the ways that truly matter.

I feel it’s necessary to mention that this was not what I had set out to discover when I started this project, nor was it the answer to the question I had intended to ask. At the start of this project, my main focus was the question, “How does public transport shape the way we view what is London and what is not?” I realized in the course of my journey that I was in many ways asking this question when I already knew the answer — obviously, when something is connected to a city via public transport, we are more likely to view it as part of the city when otherwise we wouldn’t. Chesham, Amersham, Chorleywood, Chalfont & Latimer — they may be beyond even the reaches of the M25, but since they’re part of London transport, they still technically have a claim to being “London.” Since I was going through the motions of research with the intention of merely finding information to back up what I already suspected, there was very little to excite me about the project.

Even though they look rural, the Chiltern communities are in danger of losing their essence due to the threat of suburbanization

However, I believe what I discovered instead in the course of this speaks to something much more profound and not just specific to London itself. It’s about the nature of the City, and the deep-rooted human desire to have things we cannot. In any city, not just London, there is the threat of suburbanization wiping out the authenticity of certain communities with it’s all-encompassing conformity. It’s also inaccurate to believe that anywhere you go you can honestly have the experience of both the urban and the rural in the same environment.

Early on in his book, Richard Mabey comments that the Met is unique in the context of London transport because the Met:

“does at least have a destination, and a mission. It exists to take people out of a working city to live in a greener place. The irony is that in doing so it has succeeded in wiping out, or at least dramatically changing, many of the green places that it used as bait for its customers.”

That, I believe, is the heart of what I discovered from my time on the Met. In the pursuit of providing a world that is both city and country, that can be perceived as both London and not, the Met has ruined the authenticity of both. Since towns like Chesham and Amersham can claim to be part of London, it cheapens the rest of what London is, since really, they’re not. But since those same towns can claim to be attached to a city, then they’re not really countryside, are they?

Earlier on I asked whether the city and country that the Met provides a real representation of both. I believe that from what I’ve seen and experienced on the Met, and the contradictions the line holds, the answer is a definitive no. But that doesn’t change the reality of the many people I witnessed on the Met. I saw the journey these commuters took, I experienced it — I saw the workers who used the line as an interchange in the city, those travelling from the depths of suburbia into the heart of London, those travelling back out again. To these people, it doesn’t really matter whether the Met is “authentic” or not. To the millions of people who ride this line every year, it’s a means to an end.

Which, I suppose, from a certain frame of mind renders the point of what I discovered to be meaningless. It doesn’t really matter any more than what is “London” and what is not. It’s all semantics, if you want to look at that way. But I don’t think so. This project, this paper, all this research was done for the sake of “independent study.” And you know what, I learned something. It may have not been what I intended to learn from the Met, but I think perhaps sometimes it’s not about the destination. Sometimes you have to be there for the journey, intentions be damned.