Overview

It was in London in 1863 that the world's first metro was opened - the Metropolitan Railway. Built initially to overcome severe transport problems arising from London's huge growth in wealth and population, over the next 40 years it extended far beyond London's boundaries into the countryside of Middlesex, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Generating income from house-building on land along the railway, the 'Met' - as it became known - fostered and developed the idea of an affordable home out of the city in lovely garden suburbs, with a fast train journey to work in London. It was the start of semidetached suburbanisation and was known as Metro-land. This new history examines how the Metropolitan Railway and the development of Metro-land went hand-in-hand until it was subsumed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933 and then nationalised in 1948. Packed with a wealth of detail, photographs, illustrations and contemporary advertising, it is above all revelatory to see how much has changed in social and transport terms since the 1930s, not least the price of a house!

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9780860936749

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Author Information

Irene Hawkes is an educational assessor, teacher, examiner and lecturer. She wrote The History of the Metropolitan Railway for her doctoral thesis.

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