Preston Road

 

After completing the Jubilee Line a couple of months ago I am now visiting the Metropolitan Line. This will be the 8th Underground line out of a total of 11 lines that I will have explored on my Underground Challenge. Although it sounds as though I am close to the finish I still have well over 100 stations on my list. Most of these stations are out of Central London so I am not expecting to find treasures round every corner but I am sure there will be some surprises on the way.

 The Metropolitan Line was the first underground railway in the world and opened on Jan 10 1863. The main line runs from Aldgate in the City of London to Amersham with branch lines to Uxbridge, Watford and Chesham. There are 34 stations on the Metropolitan Line and I have already visited 11 of them on my travels on other lines. The stations I will be visiting are all in the open, in fact only 11 stations on this line are underground. It is one of the least used lines on the Underground for its length of track and according to statistics it's the 9th busiest.

The Metropolitan Line is the magenta coloured line on the map. As you can see from the map this line stretches a long way out of London probably further than my free travel pass will allow. In some ways I have been dreading this section of the Underground because of the time it will take me to travel to and fro without finding anything more interesting than suburban estates. The yellow dots on the map are the stations I've already visited.

So here I am at Preston Road station. A proposal to build a station here in 1896 was vetoed because of its sparse population. When it was decided to use a local farm to hold the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games, a stopping place or wooden halt was opened. It was another 23 years before a station was built here. Once the railway arrived more houses, shops and schools were built.

As I got off the train the first thing I noticed were flats above the station building and railway lines. I have seen shops but not residential buildings overlooking a station.

The station had an island platform with shrubs and flowers planted in boxes.

In the waiting room, which was quite large for a small station, there were copies of photos taken in 1947, 2001 and 2009 showing that station staff have always taken an interest in making the platform more attractive with the use of shrubs and flowers.

The staircase leading up from the platform to street level.

The station building is part of a terraced block with shops and flats above.

Not far from the station was The Preston Pub built in the 1920s as the Preston Park hotel.

It dominates the corner of Preston Road and Carlton Avenue East.

Across the road from the pub they are building a new library. rather than close it completely for months and months the community library has moved to this temporary building a short walk away.

Preston Park, which is surrounded on all sides by housing is well laid out with lots of facilities.

The outdoor gym and children's playground looked clean and well maintained. I would have been happy with a nice cafe but there didn't seem to be one.

As I left the park I saw the local primary school. On one of the websites describing the area it states that 45 different languages are spoken by the children at this school which indicates the multi cultural population around Preston Road  station. The local shops were a mixture of Asian and East European. 

The streets I walked along were wide tree lined with the majority of the houses being 1930s built semi-detached family homes. 

For a multi cultural area I did not come across any temples or mosques on my walk but there were a number of churches which have been built since the 1930s. Of course if you are looking for a Hindu temple, the largest one in the UK is just a couple of miles away in Neasden. 

 

This Catholic church caught my eye because of its name. Apparently St Erconwald came to London as the Bishop of London in 675AD and was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury but died before he could take up office. This church opened its doors for business in 1970.

With the coming of the railway to the area, the movement of the Jewish population from East London came to the northwestern suburbs with its greater accessibility. The Jewish community greatly increased prior to the outbreak of the second world war and the need for a school and synagogue increased. After much fundraising a new synagogue was built here in 1956.

The station is close to other stations I visited on the Bakerloo Line so after a couple of hours I felt I had seen as much as I wanted of this pleasant but unremarkable area.