A Suburban Boy

Born into 1960s “Metroland” as I was, its not difficult to see why the love of Art Deco and the 1930s has stayed with me. By the time I was conscious of my surroundings a lot of the housing estates, shops and public buildings had only just crept into middle age. There were symbols and architecture that although beginning to lose their initial gloss were still quite fresh and vibrant. The way the town looked was different to anywhere else in the country, excluding other towns in Metroland.

The beacon of all this Art Decory was and still is the underground station, although today the adjoining buildings are a little more garish in their advertising. In my day the right hand part of the building was a tobacconist and the left was a florist. The building had been designed by Charles Holden and built between 1937-1939. The original station known as Eastcote Halt had been opened in 1910 and was no more than a platform with steps leading up to a wooden hut at road level. Compare the two stations and you’ll get some idea of Eastcote’s changing face over twenty years or so as Metro Land spread westwards.

The early station was located here to allow access to “Leafy Middlesex”, it’s fields and lanes something of a Mecca for those that wished to escape London’s grime and noise. A map of 1914 shows how rural the area was, however I suspect that by then the railway company had already purchased a lot of the land on either side of the tracks.

The same location in 1936 shows the growth of suburbia.

The speculators who built Metro Land were clever. They sold the dream of living in the country, although by the time all the housing was built there was very little countryside to be seen. Some people might ring their hands and decry the development of a once agricultural landscape, however given the overcrowding in the city it was inevitable that people would seek an all together “nicer” lifestyle.

Both sets of my Grandparents bought into this rural idle. My Mothers parents moved into Angus Drive in Ruislip around 1936 relocating there from Cheltenham. My Grandfather worked in the City and the the Metropolitan line could get him into the office within an hour.

The other Grandparents opted for something a little more urban, although possibly even more Metro Landish and relocated to Kenton on the fringes of Harrow from Birmingham. My Grandfather would make the daily commute into Fleet Street in 39 minutes. Where Ruislip lacked the finer points of Art Deco, Hunters Grove where they lived was awash with stained glass windows of sailing boats, herons and windmills, round porthole style windows and a lot of mock Tudor frontages. The interiors were a lot more ornate as well and even to my young eyes the difference between the two houses was notable.

And as for me, well the house I was born in was a mix between the two, Slightly less ornamental style but with a nod here and there to Decoism. Apparently according to my mum, the set of French doors that lead out onto the garden, built in alcove book shelves and a sliding room divider was what swung the decision to move there and my Dad always says that lack of mock wooden beams which would need regular maintenance marked it out as a good buy. They weren’t the first to live in the house and possibly in the late 1940s it got sanitised a bit and then my parents put their own take on decoration in what my Mum called Festival Style, inspiration taken from the Festival of Britain. However next door although at the time I was a bit unappreciative was a veritable time capsule. A widow, Mrs Blake had lived in number four from it’s completion in 1932. I believe her husband had died during the war and she lived alone and lacked the money or skills to “modernise” the interior. My memories are of dark wooden panelling, ornate door frames with deco motifs, panelled doors all with deco escutcheons for the locks, fruit bowl light fittings, a rather grand staircase with angular balustrades (My parents had boarded theirs up with hardboard and painted them in gloss white!!!!!) and above all some very ornate Bakelite light switches, which had I at the time had any inkling about their desirability would be now gracing the walls of my own house.

I’ll leave you with some lines from my hero John Betjeman which some up the feelings we both have for Metroland.

Baker Street Station Buffet

Early Electric! With what radiant hope
Men formed this many-branched electrolier,
Twisted the flex around the iron rope
And let the dazzling vacuum globes hang clear,
And then with hearts the rich contrivance fill’d
Of copper, beaten by the Bromsgrove Guild.

Early Electric! Sit you down and see,
‘Mid this fine woodwork and a smell of dinner,
A stained-glass windmill and a pot of tea,
And sepia views of leafy lanes in Pinner –
Then visualize, far down the shining lines,
Your parents’ homestead set in murmuring pines.

Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road,
They saw the last green fields and misty sky,
At Neasden watched a workmen’s train unload,
And, with the morning villas sliding by,
They felt so sure on their electric trip
That Youth and Progress were in partnership.

And all that day in murky London Wall
The thought of Ruislip kept him warm inside;
At Farringdon that lunch hour at a stall
He bought a dozen plants of London Pride;
While she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift,
Soared through the sales by safe hydraulic lift.

Early Electric! Maybe even here
They met that evening at six-fifteen
Beneath the hearts of this electrolier
And caught the first non-stop to Willesden Green,
Then out and on, through rural Rayner’s Lane
To autumn-scented Middlesex again.

Cancer has killed him. Heart is killing her.
The trees are down. An Odeon flashes fire
Where stood their villa by the murmuring fir
When ” they would for their children’s good conspire. ”
Of their loves and hopes on hurrying feet
Thou art the worn memorial, Baker Street.

John Betjeman