From the river to the railway

The Metropolitan Railway

‘Long looked for, come at last’

The headline banner on the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in Chesham, 1889

The branch line to Chesham

The Metropolitan Railway, London’s first underground railway, opened in 1863 running between Paddington and Farringdon. In 1868 a branch line was constructed in a northwest direction from Baker Street to Harrow. This line was extended to Chesham in July 1889, with plans to continue onwards up the valley to meet the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) at Tring.

Unfortunately, relations between the two railway companies broke down. As a result, it was decided to extend instead from Chalfont to Aylesbury, to meet the Wycombe Railway and Aylesbury & Buckingham Railway at Aylesbury. The continuation to Tring was abandoned, and so Chesham became the end of a branch line.

Arriving in town

The railway’s planned terminus was Chesham Moor. However, an extra £2,000 was raised by public subscription to bring the station into the centre of the town.

A direct route to London

The new station had a large goods yard (located where the station and Waitrose car parks stand today), which managed up to 5,000 tonnes of freight per month. The new line enabled local businesses to send their goods – watercress, woodenware – directly to the capital, rather than via Berkhamsted’s railway station.

In exchange, goods could be delivered to households in Chesham. This included coal, and the daily newspapers, which up to the 1960s arrived each morning on a train from Marylebone, returning to London as the first passenger train of the day at 5.58am.