Wolverton Park Buckinghamshire’s first new town was not Milton Keynes but nearby Wolverton, a rail company development that was born out of the railway boom of the 1840s – about 130 years before Milton Keynes began its enormous and mushrooming development. Wolverton was built by the London and Birmingham Railway Company in 1838 as a staging post between the line’s two termini. Four hours on a train without a corridor (and therefore no toilet facilities) was felt to be beyond the endurance of passengers, so a refreshment break was built into the journey. Victorians took their personal refueling seriously and the busy refreshment rooms became famous. Twenty-seven staff kept the catering operation going and in the course of a year travellers would get through staggering amounts of food and dr

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