MEDLEY OF FAST TUNES PLAYS
Child of the first war, forgotten by the second,
we called you Metro-Land.
We laid our schemes,
lured by the lush brochure,
down byways beckoned to build at last the cottage of our dreams,
a city clerk turned countryman again
and linked to the metropolis by train.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
Metro-Land,
the creation of the Metropolitan Railway
which, as you know,
was the first steam underground in the world.
In the tunnels,
the smell of sulphur was awful.
When I was a boy, "Live in Metro-Land" was the slogan.
It meant getting out of the tunnels into the country,
for the line had ambitions
of linking Manchester to Paris and dropping in at London on the way.
That grandiose scheme came to nothing.
But then the Metropolitan had a very good idea.
Look at these fields.
They were photographed in 1910 from the train.
"Why not," said a clever member of the board,
"Why not buy these orchards and farms as we go along,
"turn out the cattle, and fill the meadowland with houses.
"You would have a modern home of quality and distinction.
"You might even buy an old one if there was one left.
"And over these mild, Home County acres,
"soon there will be estate agent, coal merchant, post office, shops
"and rows of neat dwellings,
"all within easy reach of charming countryside."
Bucks, Herts and Middlesex yielded to Metro-Land...
..and City men could breakfast on the fast train to London town.
Is this Buckingham Palace?
Are we at the Ritz?
No.
This is the Chiltern Court Restaurant built above Baker Street Station.
The gateway
between Metro-Land out there and London down there.
The creation of the Metropolitan Railway.
The brochure shows you how splendid this place was
in 1913, which is about the year it was built.
Here the wives from Pinner and Ruislip, after a day's shopping
at Liberty's or Whiteley's,
would sit, waiting for their husbands
to come up from Cheapside and Mincing Lane,
and while they waited,
they could listen to the strains of the band
playing for the "the dansant"
before they took the train for home.
Early electric, punctual and prompt,
off to those cuttings in the Hampstead Hills,
St John's Wood, Marlborough Road, no longer stations,
and the trains rush through.
This is all that's left of Marlborough Road Station.
Up there, the iron brackets which supported the glass and iron roof,
and do you see that white house up there?
That was where Thomas Hood, the poet, died.
He wrote, "I remember, I remember the house where I was born." The railway cut through his garden.
I remember Marlborough Road Station
because it was the nearest station to the house where lived my future parents-in-law.
Farewell, old booking hall, once grimy brick...
..but leafy St John's Wood, which you served, remains,
forerunner of the suburbs yet to come,
with its broad avenues, detached and semidetached villas,
where lived artists and writers and military men.
And here,
screened by shrubs, walled in from public view,
lived the kept women.
What Puritan arms have stretched within these rooms
to touch what tender breasts,
as the cab horse stamped in the road outside?
Sweet, secret suburb on the city's rim.
St John's Wood.
Amidst all this frivolity,
in one place, a sinister note is struck.
In that helmeted house,
where rumour has it
the Rev John Hugh Smith Piggott lived,
an Anglican clergyman, whose Clapton congregation
declared him to be Christ, a compliment he accepted.
His country house was called the Agapemone, the abode of love.
The ladies in it called him beloved
and some were summoned to be brides of Christ.
Did they strew their lord with lilies?
I don't know.
But for some reason, this house has an uncanny atmosphere,
threatening and restless.
Someone seems to be looking over your shoulder.
Who is it?
DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS
Over the points by electrical traction,
out of the chimneypots, into the openness,
till we come to the suburb that's thought to be commonplace,
home of the gnome and the average citizen,
Sketchley and Unigate, Dolcis and Wallpamur.
# Neasden...
# You won't be sorry that you breezed in
# The traffic lights and yellow lines
# And the illuminated signs All say welcome to the borough that everybody's pleased in
# Neasden
# Where the birds sing in the trees-den
# You can hear the blackbirds coo So why not take the Bakerloo?
# It'll work out that much cheaper If you buy a season. #
But if you did, you'd find a steep slope
ascending to a wide and well-prospected view
with grassy banks
and cunningly planted clumps of trees.
And here Mr Eric Simms in Gladstone Park...
..keeps a sharp eye on what is going on.
So this is the start...
of the well-known Neasden nature trail.
This Neasden nature trail is something I've developed over the 21 years that I've lived here.
Living in a suburban situation, this park is a tremendous asset for anyone interested in wildlife.
It's a marvellous place to watch young birds at this time of year, which roam over the grass swards.
There are something like 900 pairs of house sparrows within half a mile of my home.
Many can be found in the park.
One of the very common birds round here is the London or feral pigeon.
That's a cock blackbird looking for worms.
That's a hen blackbird which has just come out from the shrubberies.
The second most interesting part of my nature trail at Neasden
are the allotments in Brook Road.
There's such a good view that I can identify birds at a great distance.
I've seen 92 different species of bird within half a mile of my home.
And that's not a bad total.
Beyond Neasden, there was an unimportant hamlet
where for years the Metropolitan didn't bother to stop...
Wembley!
Slushy fields and grass farms,
then...
out of the mist arose
Sir Edward Watkin's dream,
an Eiffel Tower for London.
Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the line.
Thousands, he thought, would pay to climb the tower,
which would be higher than the one in Paris.
He announced a competition, 500 guineas for the best design.
Never were such flights of Victorian fancy seen.
Civil engineers from Sweden and Thornton Heath,
Rochdale and Constantinople
entered designs.
Cast iron, concrete,
glass, granite and steel,
lifts hydraulic and electric,
a spiral steam railway,
theatres, chapels
and sanatoria in the air.
In 1890, the lucky winner was announced.
It had Turkish baths,
arcades of shops and winter gardens.
Designed by a firm of Scots with a London office,
Stewart, MacLaren and Dunn,
it was to be 150 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower,
but when at last it reached above the trees,
and the first stage was opened to the crowds,
the crowds weren't there. They didn't want to come.
Money ran out. The tower lingered on,
resting and rusting, until it was dismembered...
in 1907.
This is where London's failed Eiffel Tower stood -
Watkin's Folly, as it was called.
Here, on this Middlesex turf.
And since then, the site has become quite well known.
CROWD CHEERS
It was here, I can just remember the excitement and the hope.
St George's Day...
1924.
The British Empire Exhibition at Wembley,
opened by King George V.
Ah, yes, those imperial pavilions.
India, Sierra Leone, Fiji, with their suntanned sentinels of Empire outside.
To me, they were more interesting
than the palaces of industry and engineering, which were too like my father's factory.
That was the Palace of Arts,
where I used to wait while my father saw the living models
in Pear's Palace of Beauty.
How well I remember the Palace of Arts. Massive and simple outside,
almost pagan in its sombre strength.
But inside...
ORGAN MUSIC
This is the basilica in the Palace of Arts.
It was used for displaying the best church art of 1924.
AK Lawrence, Eric Gill,
Mary Adshead, Colin Gill, and so on.
Today it's used for housing the props of the pantomime,
Cinderella on ice and that kind of thing.
Really, it's quite right because church and stage have always been closely connected.
SQUEALING AND SCREAMING
The Pleasure Park was the best thing about the exhibition.
The King and Queen enjoyed it, too. There they are.
Oh, bygone Wembley. Where's the pleasure now?
The temples stare.
The Empire passes by.
This was the grandest palace of them all.
The British Government Pavilion and the famous Wembley lions.
Now they guard an empty warehouse site.
But still people kept on coming to Wembley.
The show houses of the newly built estates.
A younger, brighter, homelier Metro-Land.
Rusholme, Russells,
Rustlings, rusty tiles,
Rose Hatch,
Rosehill,
Roselea, Rosemount,
rose roof,
each one is slightly different from the next.
A bastion of individual taste
on fields that once were bright with buttercups.
Deep in rural Middlesex,
the county that inspired Keats...
"Magic casements opening on the dawn."
A speculative builder here at Kingsbury let himself go...
in the '20s.
And look what a lot of country there is.
Fields and farms between the houses.
Oaks and elms above the rooftops.
The smart, suburban railway knew its place
and did not dare approach too near the Hill.
Here at the foot of Harrow Hill, alongside the Metropolitan electric trains,
tradesmen from Harrow built - in the '80s or '90s, I should think, from the look of the buildings -
these houses, and a nice little speculation they were.
Quiet, near the railway station,
with their own church and public house,
and they're named reverently after the great people of Harrow School,
Drury, Vaughan, Butler.
SCHOOLBOYS SING
Valiantly, that Elizabethan foundation at the top of the Hill
has held the developers at bay.
Harrow School fought to keep this hillside green.
But for all its tradition and elegance,
it couldn't wholly stem the rising tide of Metro-Land.
The healthy air of Harrow in the 1920s and '30s,
when these villas were built.
You paid a deposit and eventually, we hope, you had your own house
with its garage and front garden and back garden.
A verge in front of your house
and grass and trees for the dog.
Variety created in each facade of the houses
and in the colouring of the trees.
In fact, the country had come to the suburbs.
Roses are blooming in Metro-Land,
just as they do in the brochure.
# Grab your coat and get your hat
# Leave your worry on the doorstep
# Just direct your feet
# To the sunny side of the street
# Can't you hear a pit-a-pat? And that happy tune is your step
# Life can be so sweet
# On the sunny side of the street
# I used to walk in the shade
# With those blues on parade
# But I'm not afraid
# This rover crossed over
# If I never have a cent
# I'll be rich as Rockefeller
# Gold dust at my feet
# On the sunny side of the street... #
Along the serried avenues of Harrow's garden villages,
households rise and shine and settle down to the Sunday morning rhythm.
"Hello and best wishes, everyone, and happy birthday, Mary and Jean," begins this batch of dedications.
Campbell Gooding of Newfarm in Queensland bids me to greet Mary and Dick Shenaghan of Teddington,
Ian Ferguson, studying hard at Southampton University - they reckon! -
and "the one and only" Doug Sewell.
This is a record for you all from the people who sent the messages.
Down By The Lazy River with the Osmonds.
# What you doing tonight?
# You got no place to go
# Gotta get out of the city
# You know it won't be long till we'll be, we'll be...
# Down, I said down...
# Come on down...
# Down by the lazy river Come as you please
# Oh, yeah...
# Down by the lazy river One big family
# If you're all alone, you won't be long
# Just bring your guitar and sing your song
# Down by the lazy river... #
This is Grim's Dyke in Harrow Weald.
I've always regarded it as a prototype of all suburban homes in southern England.
It was designed by the famous Norman Shaw a century ago.
Merry England outside,
haunting and romantic within.
With Norman Shaw, one thing leads to another.
I came out of a low entrance hall
into this bigger hall.
And then one doesn't know what's coming next.
There's an arch.
If I go up there,
I'll see goodness knows what.
Let's go and look.
There's a sense of mounting excitement.
Have I strayed into a Hitchcock film?
DISTANT BABBLE OF VOICES
TWO BANGS
Ladies,
good afternoon and welcome to the Byron Luncheon Club.
I would like to give a very warm welcome to our speaker, Mrs Elizabeth Cooper.
APPLAUSE
I would like to thank you, Madam Chairman,
first of all for inviting me to this beautiful lunch,
beautiful room and bevy of beautifully dressed and beautifully hatted ladies.
I think it's the most beautiful house in Harrow and one of the most interesting,
architecturally and historically. Dear things, indeed it is.
Tall, brick chimneystacks, not hidden away, but prominent,
and part of the design.
Local bricks, local tiles, local timber,
no facade is the same.
Gabled windows gaze through leaded lights down winding lawns.
It isn't a fake.
It's a new practical house for a newly rich Victorian.
Strong, impressive...
original.
And yonder gloomy pool contained,
on May 29th 1911,
the dead body...
of WS Gilbert,
Grim's Dyke's most famous owner
and Sullivan's partner in the Savoy operas.
After a good luncheon, he went bathing with two girls,
Ruby Preece and Winifred Emery.
Ruby found she was out of her depth.
In rescuing her, Gilbert died of a heart attack
here, in this pond.
Funereal from Harrow draws the train.
On, on, north-westwards,
London far away,
and stations start to look quite countrified.
Pinner, a parish of 1,000 souls, till railways gave it many thousands more.
Pinner is famous for its village fair
where once a year, St John The Baptist's Day
shows all the climbing High Street filled with stalls.
It is the feast day of the parish saint,
a medieval fair in Metro-Land.
21 and under,
any prize you like!
Any prize you like!
When I was young, there stood among the fields a lonely station,
once called Stanley Lodge,
its wooden platform crunched by hobnailed shoes.
And this is where the healthier got out.
# I strolled down the fairway of love
# On the day I lost my heart
# I found it was heaven above
# And I was bunkered from the start
# I found I was soon in the rough
# Now sadly do I roam
# For I've got a driver and six little niblicks
# Waiting at home sweet home. #
One of the joys of Metro-Land was the nearness of golf to London.
Moor Park, Rickmansworth was a great attraction.
Now, eye on the ball, left knee slightly bent,
slow back...
Missed.
HE LAUGHS
Well, that wasn't up to much.
Perhaps the clubhouse is more exciting.
Did ever golf club have a 19th hole so sumptuous as this?
Fit for a monarch.
Did ever golf club have so fine a hall?
Venetian decor, 1732.
And yonder dome is not a dome at all,
but painted in the semblance of a dome.
The sculptured figures all are done in paint,
that lean towards us with so rapt a look.
How skilfully the artist takes us in.
What Georgian wit these classic gods have heard
who now must listen to the golfer's tale
of holes in one and how I missed that putt,
hooked at the seventh, sliced across the tenth,
but ended on the 17th all square.
Ye gods, ye gods,
how comical we are.
Would Jove have been appointed captain here?
See how exclusive thine estate Moor Park.
And how are you? I'm very well. How are you? I feel a lot better now seeing you. Even in this weather?
Even in this weather, yes. I'd sooner see you at any time than this rain.
See you later. Bye-bye, dear.
Bye.
Can you let me through, please? Where have you come from?
Visiting a friend on the estate. What's her name? Why do you want to know? It's a private estate.
If you don't tell me where you've come from, you've got to go all the way back again. It's pouring...
I'm awfully sorry, love, I only work here. I'm not allowed to let you through. Go the same way back.
Onwards, onwards,
north of the border, down Hertfordshire way.
MUSIC: "When The Battle Is O'er"
The Croxley Green Revels,
a tradition that stretches back to 1952.
For pageantry is deep in all our hearts.
And this, for many a girl, is her greatest day.
Following this year's royal court,
we have the retiring queen and her court.
The retiring queen - Catherine Fretwell of Rickmansworth School.
The new queen will be crowned by the retiring queen
and then the page will set the whole of our afternoon programme into action.
I now crown you Queen of the Revels of Croxley Green 1972.
To my people in Croxley Green,
greetings.
On this memorable day, I am proud to greet you as your Croxley Green Revels Queen.
I am happy that I have been chosen
and I ask you, one and all,
to make the year 1972 a very happy one.
In this very lovely corner of England, of which we are so proud,
let us try to find peace and goodwill
in our homes and in our community.
Let us try and bring happiness to those around us
and to those less fortunate than ourselves.
Spoken by Jilly Garwood at Croxley Green, Hertfordshire.
Large, uneventful fields of dairy farms.
Slowly winds the Chess brimful of trout.
An unregarded part of Hertfordshire awaits its fate.
And in the heights above, Chorley Wood Village,
where in '89 the railway came
and wood smoke mingled with the sulphur fumes
and people now could catch the early train to London
and be home just after tea.
This is, I think, essential Metro-Land.
Much trouble has been taken to preserve the country quality surviving here.
Oak, hazel, hawthorn,
gorse and sandy tracks, better for sport than farming, I suspect.
Common and cricket pitch.
Church school and church.
All are reminders of a country past.
Yes!
Rounder! Rounder! Rounder! Rounder!
Run!
Mrs Hill, we've got eight rounders now.
In the orchards beyond the common, one spring morning in 1900,
a young architect, Charles Voysey, and his wife
decided to build themselves a family home.
I think it was the parent of thousands of simple English houses.
All must be plain and practical.
That sloping buttress wall is to counteract the outward thrust of the heavy slate roof.
Do you notice those stepped tiles below the chimneypots?
They're there to throw off the driving rain.
That lead roof ridge is pinched up at the end for the same reason.
Horizontal courses of red tiles in the white walls protect windows and openings.
It's hard to believe that so simple and stalwart a house
was built in Queen Victoria's reign.
Voysey liked to design every detail in his house.
For instance, that knocker - Voysey.
Typical curious shaped handle - Voysey.
And this...
hand-wrought iron hinge,
with what seems to be his signature tune, the heart, there at the end of the hinge.
It's here round the letterbox. It's also round the keyhole.
And it seems to be on the key. That's a Voysey key.
In the house, he did everything down to the knives and forks.
The plan of the house radiates out from this hall.
Extreme simplicity is the keynote.
No unnecessary decoration.
The balusters here...
for the stairs, straight verticals,
giving an impression of great height to this simple hall.
But, as a matter of fact, it isn't a particularly high house.
In fact, it's rather small.
I knew Mr Voysey and I saw Mrs Voysey. They were small people.
In case you think it's a large house, I'll just walk...
I'm fat, I know, and I'm not particularly tall.
I'll stand by the door here and you compare my height with the ledge and the door.
A round window...
on the garden side of the house.
And a typical Voysey detail.
This pane which opens
to let in the air
from Beechy Bucks, which is just on the other side of the road.
Back to the simple life.
Back to nature. To a shady retreat in the reeds and rushes of the River Chess.
The lure of Metro-Land was remoteness and quiet.
This is what a brochure of the '20s said...
"It's the trees,
"the fairy dingles
"and the 101 things in which Dame Nature's fingers have lingered long
"in setting out this beautiful array
"of trout stream, wooded slope, meadow and hilltop sites.
"Send a postcard for the homestead of your dreams
"to Loudwater Estate, Chorley Wood."
# With 1,000 little stars With 1,000 little stars
# We can decorate the ceiling
# With an optimistic feeling
# We can build a little home
# Every single little dream Every single little dream
# Is a shingle or a rafter
# We can paint the house with laughter
# When we build a little home
# It's not a palace, nor a poorhouse But the rent is absolutely free
# This is my house, but it's your house
# If you'll come and live with me
# With a carpet on the floor With a carpet on the floor
# Made of buttercups and clover
# All our troubles will be over
# When we build our little home. #
I'm on! I'm on this end!
Oh, happy outdoor life in Chorley Wood,
in Daddy's swim pool, while old Spot looks on
and Susan dreams of super summer hols
whilst chlorinated wavelets brush the banks.
Oh, happy indoor life in Chorley Wood,
where strangest dreams of all are realised.
ORGAN MUSIC Mellifluating out from modern brick,
the pipe dream of a local man, Len Rawle.
For, pipe by pipe and stock by stock,
he moved out of the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square,
the mighty Wurlitzer,
till the huge instrument filled half his house
with all its multitude of sound effects.
ORGAN MAKES STEAM TRAIN SOUNDS
Steam took us onwards
through the ripening fields,
ripe for development,
where the landscape yields clay for warm brick,
timber for post and rail,
through Amersham to Aylesbury and the Vale.
In those wet fields,
the railway didn't pay.
The Metro stops at Amersham today.
In 1931,
all Buckinghamshire was scandalised
by the appearance
high above Amersham of a concrete house
in the shape of a letter Y.
It was built for a young professor
by a young architect, Amyas Connell.
They called it High And Over.
"I am the home of a 20th-century family," it proclaimed,
"that loves air and sunlight and open country."
It started a style called moderne, perhaps rather old-fashioned today.
And one day, poor thing, it woke up and found developers in its back garden.
MUSIC: "Everything I Own"
Goodbye, high hopes and overconfidence.
In fact, it's probably goodbye, England.
Where are the advertisements?
Where's the shopping arcade? The coal merchants?
And the parked cars?
This is a part of the Metropolitan Railway that's been entirely forgotten.
Beyond Aylesbury it lies
in flat fields
with huge elms
and distant blue hills.
Quainton Road Station.
It was to have been the Clapham Junction of the rural part of the Metropolitan.
With what hopes this place was built in 1890.
They hoped that trains would run down the main line there
from London to the Midlands and the North.
They'd come from the Midlands and the North, rushing through here to London and a Channel tunnel
and then on to Paris.
But, alas, all that's happened
is that there...
a line curves away to the last of the Metropolitan stations
in the country, in far Buckinghamshire,
which was at Verney Junction.
And I can remember sitting here
on a warm autumn evening
in 1929
and seeing the Brill tram
from the platform on the other side
with steam up
ready to take two or three passengers through oil-lit halts
and over level crossings, a rather bumpy journey,
to a station
not far from the remote hilltop village of Brill.
The houses of Metro-Land never got as far as Verney Junction.
Grass triumphs.
And I must say I'm rather glad.
Subtitles by BBC Broadcast