TUBE TREASURE TROVE (S part 1)

 TUBE TREASURE TROVE

S Part 1 (St James's Park to South Kensington)

     This is an A–Z of London’s most interesting Underground stations. In an age where we are often looking down at our phones, Tube Treasure Trove is an invitation to look up and discover the architecture, history and oddities hiding in plain sight - on what might otherwise be a mundane journey, perhaps one made many times before.

Preface (short version):

      London's Metropolitan line was the world’s first Underground. Opening in 1863, it was a 3.5-mile Victorian steam railway with seven stations running from Paddington to Farringdon.

      More than 160 years later, the network has grown into a living museum of architecture, engineering and graphic design. Today the Underground carries around four million passengers on a typical weekday across 272 stations.

The Visionaries

Frank Pick – The design visionary of London's transport system from 1908 until his retirement in 1940, Pick shaped the identity of the Underground more than any other individual. 

Leslie Green – Green designed around 40 oxblood-red glazed stations in the early 1900s.

Charles Walter Clark - Metropolitan Railway architect; designed around 25 stations and helped define the architectural character of the Met line and Metro-land.

Charles Holden – Holden was responsible for designing more than 50 stations during the 1920s and 1930s. 

Edward Johnston – Johnston designed the distinctive Underground typeface, Johnston Sans, in 1916. It remains in use to this day. He also redesigned the famous roundel symbol. 

Harry Beck – In 1933, Beck transformed the underground map by prioritising clarity over geographical accuracy.

Roland Paoletti – As the architect behind many Jubilee Line Extension stations, Paoletti oversaw one of the most ambitious programmes of station design since the 1930s. 

ST JAMES'S PARK

      St James's Park station is incorporated into Charles Holden's 55 Broadway, until 2020 the headquarters of Transport for London. When it was completed in 1929, it was London's first American-style skyscraper. At the time, the ten-story office block was the tallest building in Westminster.

      The building façade features a series of works by leading sculptors, which were considered deeply avant-garde in 1929 and criticised for being indecent ...

   

Day and Night Jacob Epstein (carved directly into the building)  

   

North Wind Eric Gill                                      West Wind Henry Moore

See Tube Trivia and Addenda below for more on Moore.

     Thanks largely to these sculptures, St James's Underground station is Grade I-listed and many original features remain ...

  

     The station itself opened in 1868 as part of the Metropolitan District Railway (the ancestor of today’s District line) and it is one of the few Underground stations where the original Victorian layout remains very visible. The platforms still have the white, green and black tiles used on many Underground stations in the 1920s and the former Underground HQ reception area has also been retained. 

    Some of the former ticket windows have become 'Tiny Parks' ...

   

  

     More recently, but with a nod to the history of the station, Angels of History (2024) by Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings are a pair of large mosaics commissioned to overlook the stairs down to the platforms.

     Over time, the station name has been punctuated differently on tube maps - St. James' Park, St. James Park, St. James's Park and currently St James's Park - although the station signage retains the full stop after "St".

ST JOHN'S WOOD

  

     St John's Wood Underground station, which opened in 1939, is one of only three stations to still have its original bronze uplighters: Earl's Court and Southgate are the other two.

    The platforms are adorned with Stabler's tiles (76 in 18 variants), some showing London landmarks, including 55 Broadway. They were designed by Harold Stabler and made at Poole Pottery. 

    

    

    

Click here to see all 18 variants.

     St John's Wood is the station for both Lord's Cricket Ground and the Beatles' Abbey Road zebra crossing. There was once a separate Lord's station, which served the cricket ground from 1868 until 1939. There is actually an Abbey Road station. But it's nowhere near the famous crossing. The DLR station was named in 1987, with seemingly no consideration for the many Fab Four fans who continue to make a pilgrimage - only to end up in an unremarkable part of east London. I recently brought this up with TfL. This was their response:

Dear Mr Goodenough

    Thank you for contacting Transport for London (TfL) regarding Abbey Road DLR station and the confusion experienced by some visitors who arrive there expecting to find Abbey Road Studios. I apologise for the delay in our response.
    We appreciate you taking the time to share your observations and we acknowledge the point you raise. Stations are generally named to reflect the communities, roads or geographical locations they serve, rather than destinations or tourist attractions that may share a similar name elsewhere in London.
     We also acknowledge that, for visitors from around the world travelling to Abbey Road DLR station believing it to be the closest station to Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood, it must be frustrating and can impact daily plans and commitments.
     In regard to how often TfL receives feedback about this matter, I have seen one previous case logged. I would not be able to comment on how often this feedback is received through other channels such as social media, telephony or comments made to station staff. We recognise that a visitor finding themselves in the wrong place may be stressful and time consuming.
     As Abbey Road DLR station has served the local community under its current name since opening in 2011, there are currently no plans to change its name.
     However, your comments regarding visitor guidance, and the suggestion for an alternative name to Abbey Road DLR station, have been noted and will be shared with the relevant teams. We appreciate you raising this with us, and your feedback is valued.
Thanks again for contacting us.
Kind regards
Ryan Lyapah
Customer Service Adviser
Transport for London Customer Services

Ryan -
Thanks for getting back to me. I'm obviously not overjoyed with your response, which acknowledges the problem but offers no solution. I would have thought the very least TfL could do is remove the 'humorous' sign at Abbey Road station which just adds insult to injury.
Regards,
Michael Goodenough

Abbey Road DLR Station

    This might become a Long and Winding Road, but I don't intend to Let It Be. Should anyone feel the same, please contact customerservice@tfl.gov.uk. I would much appreciate the Help! Maybe we can start a campaign group.

ST PAUL'S

     The eastbound and westbound lines were built one above the other to minimise the risk of damaging Wren's creations, with the station sitting between St Paul's and Christchurch Greyfriars church (later largely destroyed by the Luftwaffe). During the Second World War, the electricity grid control room for the entire of London and Southeast England was housed here, in the lift shaft.

     Rain or shine, Hugh sells The Big Issue outside St Pauls Underground Station. You don't do a full course of radiotherapy at Bart's without getting to know Hugh. He has a card reader, £4000 in the bank, and it's a long time since he was homeless. I guess this is a good patch and he does ok - city workers, tourists, the clergy, hospital staff and, occasionally, people who have just received the news they are not going to die. He would do even better if he had a cat, wrote a book about it, and sold the movie rights. 

SEVEN SISTERS

     Hans Unger's platform tile motif refers to the seven elms planted in a circle around a walnut tree that gave the area its name in the 1730s.

      Seven Sisters is the nearest Tube station to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

     On the rare occasion I find myself at Seven Sisters station I always hope for a photo op like this. It was shot by a commuter some years ago. I seem to recall he later admitted he'd cropped his scoop as there were rather more than seven sisters on the platform at the time.

SLOANE SQUARE

    The River Westbourne (which runs from north London to the Thames) flows above the Sloane Square platforms in an iron conduit. It has been there since the station first opened in 1868.

     The station was rebuilt in the late 1930s but the building didn't last long as it was mostly destroyed by a German bomb in 1940, which killed 37 and injured 79 passengers on a train.

     Sloane Square is one of two tube stations - the other being South Kensington - mentioned in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe:

     And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations –

    They're a ravenous horde – and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations.
    And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon);
    He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven.

SOUTH KENSINGTON

     South Kensington Underground station opened in 1868, as one of the five original stations on what is now the District line. In 1907, the forerunner of the Piccadilly line started running trains through the station. It had a separate entrance with Leslie Green's ox-blood red façade. This entrance still exists, but has been redundant since the 1970s. The building sits next to the original Metropolitan and District station, which is still in use.

     South Kensington, with around 34 million passengers per annum, is currently the busiest Underground station without step-free access. That is about to be remedied with a £120 million upgrade. But the work is not expected to be finished until 2029.

    Decorations on the Piccadilly line platforms relate to the nearby National History Museum.

  

        The westbound platform tiles (above) depict living animals and the eastbound platform extinct ones ... like the dodo ...

  

      Most people think they are looking at a stuffed dodo in the Natural History Museum. But it is actually a life-size reconstruction - as is every museum dodo. There are no surviving taxidermied dodos. They are modelled on dodo skeletons and paintings - and the dodo became extinct long before photography could have recorded a living specimen. 

     The word 'dodo' may come from the Portuguese doudo, meaning foolish or simpleton - presumably because this flightless bird, endemic to the island of Mauritius, seemed incapable of recognising the sailors who approached it as predators. Besides regarding dodos as ready-meals, humans also released invasive species such as pigs, rats and cats onto Mauritius, which consumed the dodo's eggs and chicks. The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662.

     A 500-yard pedestrian subway runs under Exhibition Road from South Kensington station to the Science Museum passing the Victoria & Albert and Natural History Museums en route. Designed by John Wolfe-Barry, the engineer of Tower Bridge, it was originally planned to run all the way to the Albert Hall.
     As I previously mentioned - South Kensington is one of two tube stations (the other being Sloane Square) referenced in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.

Tube Trivia and Addenda:

     There are two Grade I-listed Underground stations - St James's Park and Bank. Six are Grade II*-listed:  Arnos Grove, Baker Street, Moorgate, Oakwood, Southgate and Sudbury Town. A further 69 are Grade II-listed.

     St John’s Wood is the only station name containing no letters from the word “mackerel”. This is only true because the word "Saint" is always abbreviated "St" in the name. You have to be concerned about the mentality of the person who came up with this. Victoria Coren Mitchell once described it as her favourite trivia question. 

     This is Emily Medhurst. On August 17, her specialist subject on the BBC's Mastermind was Transport for London Moquette - the patterned upholstery on the capital's trains and buses. On what has since been described as Mastermind's 'most niche specialist subject', Emily scored eight out of twelve. Unfortunately, her general knowledge wasn't strong enough to see her through to the next round - where she would have had to nominate a different specialist subject. We can only speculate what that might have been. 

     Emily knitted the vest herself. The design is obviously Fernando Solis's 2016 update of the Overground moquette from the original 2008 design by Wallace Sewell.  And you thought I was nerdy!

Imperial War Museum: Henry Moore and Bill Brandt

     Henry Moore, whose West Wind appears on the façade of 55 Broadway above St James's Park station, took cover from an air raid in Belsize Park station one night in autumn 1940. Fascinated by the sight of people camping underground, he made a series of drawings ... 

      Moore and photographer Bill Brandt worked for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, reaching a national audience through magazines and newspapers.

     In December 1942, a special issue of Lilliput Magazine placing the work of Brandt and Moore side by side had a huge impact.

Bill Brandt, 1940

     Brandt was born in Germany. He lived in Paris and Vienna before making England his home in 1934. He later disowned his German heritage. Using his German-made Rollieflex camera Brandt produced a pictorial record of life underground during the Blitz, which he described as the "long alley of intermingled bodies with the hot, smelly air". His photos were sent to President Roosevelt to illustrate conditions in London.

     The Underworld (1918) by Walter Bayes shows Londoners sheltering from a First World War German air raid in Elephant and Castle Tube station. From June 1917 to May 1918, some 300,000 people sheltered from the bombs in London's Underground stations. That is almost double the number who sheltered in the Tube during the 1940-41 Blitz.