Acknowledgements

This website is the result of team effort, put together by dedicated researchers – Amy Quirke, Honor Peters, Amanda Houchen, Jo Renshaw, Claire Newing, Elizabeth Tyzack, Emily Jenkinson and Richael Jenkins - who have talked to estate agents, parish clerks, town and county councils up and down the country in order to gather up-to-date information. Book editor Jane Hutchings has performed a magnificent role in assembling the pieces of the Commuterland patchwork and sewing them invisibly together.

Crucial information about season tickets, journey times and frequency of trains has been prepared by the public transport travel consultant Barry Doe, who sifted all the timetables and fares manuals of all the rail companies crossed by the guide. His knowledge is encyclopaedic. See www.barrydoe.co.uk for his own on-line annual National Rail Passenger Operators Map.
Note: data was last updated in 2010.

The school league tables provided invaluable help in finding schools which produced the best results, though there are more than we had space to mention. Useful sources of further information include local government websites, the Shire County Guides (Shire Publications Ltd), and The Villages of Britain series (Countryside Books) which are marvellous repositories of oral history prepared by the Women’s Institutes.

Supreme efforts have been made to achieve factual accuracy in a world where perceptions of people and places vary, and where the pace of physical change in our towns and villages is now extremely rapid. We are grateful to all those people who have shared their local knowledge with us to make this website as useful as it is.