The concept of Metro-land was created by an employee of the Metropolitan Railways’ marketing board, James Garland, around 1915. The Metropolitan railway had expanded their lines from Baker Street, out to the villages of Wembley and Harrow and beyond to towns like Aylesbury and Amersham. To accomplish this, they had to purchase large tracts of land from farmers and landowners either side of the proposed line.
After the line and new stations had been built, they decided to build homes on the left over land. The homes would be affordable and spacious compared to the inner city terraces of London. The new houses were aimed at the lower middle class workers such as bank clerks and office workers who lived and worked in London, but wanted a quintessential piece of the English countryside for a home. This idea was a roaring success, and in the first thirty years of the 20th century the populations of villages such as Pinner and Harrow Weald grew by 800%. The population explosion in these areas necessitated the building of various infrastructure such as hospitals, police stations and schools, as well as more commercial buildings like cinemas and factories.
Being the invention of a marketing department, Metro-land has no defined boundaries. Indeed the annually produced guide to this invented region, Metro-land, defined it as “a country with elastic borders that each visitor can draw for himself”. Traditionally, the area of Metro-land is thought to spread out in a triangular shape from Baker Street station through the North West of London, and up to the counties of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. More strictly it can be traced along the route of the original Metropolitan railway, (not exactly matched by the current Metropolitan underground line), from Baker Street up to Wembley, through Harrow and then Pinner, Amersham and up to Aylesbury. The poet and architectural critic Sir John Betjeman is closely associated with Metro-Land, mentioning it in several of his poems and making a 1973 documentary called, Metro-Land.
After the line and new stations had been built, they decided to build homes on the left over land. The homes would be affordable and spacious compared to the inner city terraces of London. The new houses were aimed at the lower middle class workers such as bank clerks and office workers who lived and worked in London, but wanted a quintessential piece of the English countryside for a home. This idea was a roaring success, and in the first thirty years of the 20th century the populations of villages such as Pinner and Harrow Weald grew by 800%. The population explosion in these areas necessitated the building of various infrastructure such as hospitals, police stations and schools, as well as more commercial buildings like cinemas and factories.
Being the invention of a marketing department, Metro-land has no defined boundaries. Indeed the annually produced guide to this invented region, Metro-land, defined it as “a country with elastic borders that each visitor can draw for himself”. Traditionally, the area of Metro-land is thought to spread out in a triangular shape from Baker Street station through the North West of London, and up to the counties of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. More strictly it can be traced along the route of the original Metropolitan railway, (not exactly matched by the current Metropolitan underground line), from Baker Street up to Wembley, through Harrow and then Pinner, Amersham and up to Aylesbury. The poet and architectural critic Sir John Betjeman is closely associated with Metro-Land, mentioning it in several of his poems and making a 1973 documentary called, Metro-Land.
Image from Southbank Publishing.
