The Tube station that’s not even in London with links to the Roman Empire
One Tube station in ‘Metroland’ is so far from London that it’s not even in the capital.
Chalfont and Latimer Underground station sits in leafy Buckinghamshire, far from the hustle and bustle of central London.
Popular among commuters, the tiny station is one of just a handful of stations located in Zone 8.
Commuters can get from the Home County to Aldgate in east London and all stations in between on the Metropolitan Line – the oldest underground railway in the world, opened in 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon.
When the service runs on time, the journey of around 30 miles takes a little over an hour from Chalfont to Aldgate.
Passengers also have the option to use Chiltern Railways services which stop at the station.
The station is in the parish of Little Chalfont near Chalfont St Giles and Chalfont St Peter villages – known collectively as The Chalfonts – and neighbouring Amersham.
A pub quiz-worthy fact is that the distance between the Chalfont station and Chesham in Zone 9 is the longest between any station on the Tube network, taking around eight minutes to cover 5.3 miles.
What is 'Metroland'?
The suburbs along the Metropolitan Line were at the forefront of early commuting.
In the early 20th century, the Metropolitan Railway created leaflets to promote the opportunities in the rural land north-west of London.
The term ‘Metro-land’ was officially coined in 1915.
The Metro-land project saw the railway company branch out into property and buy estates in the neighbouring areas.
The term became more widely known and associated with the idyllic rural suburbs after John Betjeman’s 1973 poetic documentary ‘Metro-land.’
Although officially on the London Underground, the stations in the area are also some of the highest, with Amersham station being the highest station above sea level at 482 feet.
The Metropolitan Line opened on 10 January 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon, but it didn’t extend to Little Chalfont until 1889.
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The area has a rich history dating back to the Roman Empire.
A stone’s throw from the station is Latimer, which had a fancy Roman villa in the 1st AD, thought to be part of a string of five villas along the picturesque River Chess.
The area is among the wealthiest in the UK, and despite being outside the M25, it is not cheap to live in.
On average, houses near Chalfont and Latimer sold for £1,080,590 last year, according to Rightmove.
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