'Metro-land'

Every single little dream

Is a rafter or a shingle

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 its your house,

If you'll come and live with me.

With a carpet on the floor,

Made of buttercups and clover,

All our troubles will be over,

When we build a little home.

     Earlier this year, the 26th of February to be exact, the BBC quietly marked the fiftieth anniversary of that wonderful documentary 'Metro-land' made by that admirable combination of the then Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman and producer & director Edward Mirzoeff. The result, as one would expect, is a delight. For A N Wilson, Betjeman's biographer, it was 'too good to be described simply as a 'programme''.

     I've outlined before, in my post about their 1974 documentary 'A Passion for Churches', the history of the Betjeman & Mirzoeff's collaboration. (That really does sound like the name of a firm of solicitors or even, maybe, a rather posh shoe shop!); but just to recap. The two of them began working together on three programmes BBC2 documentary series 'A Bird's Eye View' in the late 60s, and 'Metro-land' represents the continuity of their collaboration and, one must feel, their friendship. 

     'Metro-land' was, apparently, conceived (in a very civilised fashion) over lunch in Wheelers, the well-known London fish restaurant. Originally the documentary was intended to be an exploration of the suburb in general but it was decided to concentrate on one area of suburbia in NW London that was served by the Metropolitan line out of Baker St.  This was chosen not only as a sort of paradigm of suburban living, but because of the unique way the suburbs in that part of the capital developed in the interwar period with the railway company effectively acting as property developer. (It was the advertising department of the Metropolitan Railway who coined the term 'Metro-land'.) Compared to 'A Passion for Churches' this is a straightforward linear narrative. Sir John takes the train from Baker St tube station to the end of the Metropolitan line in distant Buckinghamshire, stopping off along the route for a little exploration, both historical and contemporary. And a lot is crammed into those 50 odd minutes. Our first call is at an earlier suburb: St John's Wood. It can, in fact, claim to be one of the earliest, dating from the end of the 18th century - all villas strung out along tree lined avenues. Rus in urbe. We then proceed to stop off at Neasden, Harrow, Wembley, Moor Park before we come to the end of the line at Amersham. We visit Grimsdyke (1870-72), at Harrow Weald, by Richard Norman Shaw; the great Baroque house Moor Park which is now the club house of a golf club; the Orchard (1900) by Voysey at Chorley Wood and High and Over (1929-31) by Amyas Connell. We meet the man behind the Neasden Nature Trail and the chap with a full scale cinema organ in his house.  And although, as I've said, a lot is squeezed into those fifty minutes, the pace is calm and unhurried. The camera is left to linger in telling ways.
     I couldn't help but feel, watching Sir John standing in one of the avenues of, I think, Harrow Garden Village which was the Metropolitan railway's Flagship development that 1973 is a long way away from today. What has become of those neat front gardens, bursting with roses? Probably paved over for extra parking. If not I imagine the roses have long gone for the sake of easy maintenance and the wooden window frames painted in such jaunty colours lost to upvc. 

     Indeed they have.

     One of the joys of this documentary and, indeed, its contemporaries, is that it contains no introduction as such - Betjeman does not tell us he's 'on a journey'. As the writer Gareth Roberts wrote in a recent article for 'The Spectator' an awful lot of programmes these days are essentially all, or nearly all, padding. It really is amazing how the producers of, say, 'Strictly' or 'The Masked Singer' manage to stretch things out as they do, rather like a 1940s housewife eeking out a meagre meat ration. I remember watching a recent documentary about gardens - by a well known tv gardener - and there were three consecutive introductions. He was on that 'journey' as he repeated told us.  With 'Metroland' we just jump straight in.  The audience is treated, properly, as adults.  Sink or swim.  Neither do Betjeman or Mirzoeff feel the need to repeat ad infinitum what they are doing.  And neither is Sir John vain enough to make the documentary about himself.  I can think of a number of presenters of BBC arts/history documentaries, all male I might add, who really are demons for this. 

     The suburbs and the 'semi' (the semi-detached house) have come for a lot of criticism over time some of it valid and some it just downright snobbery; the most obvious example here in the UK is the play 'Abigail's Party' of 1977, which the playwright Dennis Potter described in a 'The Sunday Times' review as "based on nothing more than rancid disdain, for it is a prolonged jeer, twitching with genuine hatred, about the dreadful suburban tastes of the dreadful lower middle classes".  For good measure, try this example, which I inadvertently and fortuitously found last night while flicking through a small book on interior design* published by 'Good Housekeeping' magazine in the early 70s:

'Sophisticating your semi

   Moving into a 1930s 'semi' is enough to make anyone's ideas shrivel up on the spot. It is daunting to know all the neighbours have got floral carpet in the halls, three-piece suites in the living rooms, and dressing tables in the upstairs bay windows. But there's no reason why you shouldn't go out on a limb and create a very sophisticated interior with, say, bitter chocolate carpet in the hall and up the stairs (perhaps with off-white walls, plenty of modern prints, stainless steel spot-lights and, if you can, afford it, some new dead-simple banisters) With modern seating units in the living room, grouped into a square 'conversation' area, instead of set at an angle around a ghastly mottled fireplace. With built-in storage in your bedroom instead of the cumbersome and space-consuming wardrobe, chest of drawers, and dressing table trio. And with crisp roller blinds at the bay window instead of frilly, knickerbocker drapes.'

    Well, there writes somebody eager to escape their upbringing, and no mistake. At least the author has a strong opinion; read 'Good Housekeeping' these days and your brain will turn to mush.

     Oh, I suppose it is easy to mock the suburb and the 'semi', and indeed there has been a long history of that too from 'Diary of a Nobody' to the satirical magazine 'Private Eye' with its one time near obsession with Neasden. And then there the numerous sit-coms set in suburbia whether it's 'George and Mildred' or 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'. The best, perhaps, was 'The Good Life'. All that said the suburban type, which was originally developed with the slightly elitist Garden Suburb and was popularized and commercialized with the spread of Metro-land, has turned out to be a particularly successful and popular urban type - certainly a damn sight more successful and popular than that proposed by the Post-War professionals. And I have to admit at this point to a certain ambiguity: rather liking the houses (at their best they can be rather good) having grown up in one not in the orbit of some British city but a small pretty nondescript Lincolnshire market town, but hating the suburban form. I think I would find it too quiet a place for me to live. I need more human interaction. 
     And then there's the issue of style. The suburban-semi is based on the Vernacular architecture of the southeast of England, as reinterpreted by the Arts and Crafts architects such as Sir Edwin Lutyens, or the earlier Queen Anne and Ye Olde Englishe Revival such as Richard Norman Shaw.  I suppose, if one was being particularly mean, you could call it a process of bastardisation. The problem for me is that with the success of Metro-land the semi, as a sort outlier of a particular vernacular architecture tradition, began its inexorable march across the UK and nowhere was safe. Tile hanging, red tiled roofs, pebble dash (that is wet dash) spread like a rash over the entire country. There are to be found here in South-west Wales. Local vernacular materials and traditions tended to be ignored. At the least the builder of my old house, who was my great grandfather, provided it with a pantile roof in the local tradition.

Steam took us onward,

Through the ripening fields,

Ripe for development,

Where the landscape yields,

Clay for warm bricks,

Timber for post and rail,

Through Amersham to Aylesbury and the vale.

In these wet fields the railway didn't pay,

The Metro stops in Amersham today.

*'Doing Up Your Home', written by Shirley Green; part of the 'Good Housekeeping Family Library' series, General Editor Isabel Sutherland.