Amersham Station Daily Cash Book, 1910s
The museum’s Metro-land project has resulted in the donation of many relevant objects and documents relevant to Amersham station and Amersham-on-the-Hill. The museum was recently given the station’s daily cash book, used during the 1910s to record income from passengers and freight.
One page of the ledger, for 14th May 1917, shows that Mr. Mathews and Miss Barker were on duty as booking clerks. Miss Barker continued as a booking clerk well in to the 1930s and is remembered by local railwayman, Dick Hardy.
The ledger shows the ticket sale income for both the Metropolitan Railway and the (Great) Central, which at that time ran through Amersham, with sales for the Central at £6 13s, exceeding those for the ‘Met’. Freight traffic earned another £5 13s 9d, a larger sum than ‘pay on the day’ Met line tickets.
Following the opening of the station in 1892 new shops and houses began to appear in Amersham-on-the-Hill. The rate and scale of development increased after the First World War and passenger ticket sales began to increase accordingly. In 1919 Metropolitan Railway Chairman, Robert Selbie, set up the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates company. The company’s objective was to build houses on surplus land around Metropolitan Railway stations, resulting in more season ticket sales and passenger traffic on the line. Amersham’s ‘Metro-land’ development was the Weller Estate. Launched in 1930 it encompassed 78 acres of land north and south of the station.
Amersham Museum’s pop-up exhibition, Metro-land: the birth of Amersham-on-the-Hill opens on 14th May at 63 Hill Avenue, in the shop that was formerly the Entertainer. The exhibition runs from Tuesday 14th May – Saturday 1st June and is open 10am-4pm every day except 19th and 20th May.
There is also a programme of talks to support the exhibition.
Click here to see previous objects of the month