Northern Line Section Two: High Barnet to Old Street

It was a relatively simple choice. Either start at High Barnet and work south, or at Morden and work north. These are both going to be long sections, and I’ve only visited two of the stations already on other trips. I do know, from several misadventures driving from Tottenham to Wimbledon, that there’s a run of memorable stations south of the river. So it makes sense to save them for the third section, when I’m more likely to be feeling the effects of tube fatigue.

I start this trip somewhat later than my previous one, nonetheless I am at High Barnet still relatively early in the morning. I would feel disappointed if this was the only station I am going to visit, since the architecture of this is what I would describe as late 20^th century period public lavatory. It’s a very nondescript block, and I find myself amazed to see Wikipedia suggests that the station retains many of its original Victorian features. Not on the outside, it doesn’t. And I’ll be honest, in my bleary eyed only had one cup of coffee this morning and it wasn’t enough state, I wouldn’t normally pay attention to the rather lovely canopies, and the slender metal columns holding them, but it’s certainly a contrast to the station’s unlovely exterior.

While I’m waiting for the train to depart, I check my notebook, where I have jotted down ideas for games to play at such times. One that I’ve come up with is the Underground version of the Meaning of Liff. If you haven’t read “The Meaning of Liff” books, by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, then can I suggest you might enjoy tracking down copies? The idea behind these wonderful little books is that there are many experiences, actions etc. for which there are currently no adequate words in English. Yet there are thousands of words doing nothing other than hanging around on signposts and gazetteers and atlases as names of places. What the book does is to define what some of these names could be used for. I played the game last year on the Vienna U Bahn, where the only two that I came up with which are even worth printing are – Stubentor – the shortest and most useless of the Transformers, who transforms from robot into dustbin – and – Kardinal Nagl-Platz – a popular regular cast member of the Vatican TV channel’s answer to Sesame Street.

Applying this to High Barnet I come up with 2 workable definitions- a) Hairdresser’s technical term for the hairstyles favoured by leading female characters in American soap operas of the 1980s – b) Actor’s slang for a hairpiece which is in dire need of dry cleaning – as in this passage from the little known autobiography of Billy Bishop, failed variety performer and TV host – “Dear old Brucie was a lovely man, and very clean and fastidious, especially where his wigs were concerned. Now Frankie Howerd, he was the complete opposite. Lovely man but he would insist on wearing that ratty old High Barnet.”

I barely have time to complete composing then writing this definition in my notebook before we arrive at the next station, Totteridge and Whetstone. Whetstone has already been bagged for another meaning, but if Totteridge was on its own it might well be a prime candidate. It isn’t on it’s own though, so I put that thought back in its box and exit the station. Hmm, quite nice too. It’s another of the Victorian country stations we’ve found in places on the network, although this one isn’t the full Railway Children as some of them have been. It’s certainly not at all unpleasant – I like yellow brick buildings – but there’s what appears to be a conscious lack of ornamentation in the brickwork, which isn’t something I’d necessarily have expected of a building of this vintage. Somehow the plasticky roundel attached to the front of the building seems more out of place here than with most of the other stations that I’ve visited. Nonetheless, the platforms, like those of High Barnet, exude a calm and pleasant Victorian air, and it’s no hardship to spend 6 minutes in a reverie in which I define Osterley as – the state of being in which men feel that if they ring into work and put on a hoarse voice they can convince the secretary, and themselves, that they are too poorly to go in, and thus get to spend a day in front of the telly watching their Doctor Who DVDs, and drinking Lucozade in order to keep up appearances.

Woodside Park may well be contemporary with the previous station, as the brickwork is of the same colour and similarly unadorned. However this is a bigger building, and the overall configuration puts me in mind of a large pub. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part, although this is unlikely since I’m strictly a ‘glass of bucks fizz at Christmas and that’s me lot’ type of drinker. I do like the way that the station building looms a little over the platform. From the right angle this is most appealing, and it’s the third station in a row which has really rather lovely Victorian canopies. A glance at the map informs me that we’re about to run the gamut of the Finchleys. Still, there’s enough time to define Turnham Green as ‘the exact shade of colour that out of date pork products become when they have moved from the ‘inadvisable to eat’ category to the ‘about to evolve into a new life form’ category.’

Thus far we’ve had little sign today of the typical Northern Line seriousness I noted on our last trip. West Finchley provides this. Granted, the platforms are pretty similar to what we have seen on every station of today’s section so far. However, the exit/entrance is pleasant enough, but as you can hopefully see from the picture it’s pretty small, and the ticket office inside has been closed for quite some time. There’s a feeling of quiet efficiency here which is quite at odds with the sleepy atmosphere of the three previous stations, which even the Victorian feel of the platforms can’t quite dispel. I can’t help feeling sure that Finchley’s former MP, the late Baroness Thatcher, would have approved. 

Finchley follows the tried and tested Hounslow method of West – Central – East, and so the next station we arrive at is Finchley Central. As I alight from the train I do a quick double take to ensure that I haven’t taken the wrong train and ended up back at Woodside Park, since the layout and the view of the station buildings from the platform seems very similar. From the outside of the station I can see that there are differences, although the buildings have the same yellow brickwork, and look similar, but not the same in outline. One interesting feature is what appears to be a bricked up doorway just to the left of the main entrance, and I like the proportions of the windows, with their gently arched tops. I steel myself for the likelihood that this will be the last of the Victorian country style stations of this trip, since I know that Charles Holden designed the next station, East Finchley, and that the line enters the longest tunnel of the whole network after there. Before the train arrives, though, I nip across to platform three to pay homage to Harry Beck, who is memorialised with a plaque, since this was the station he used most regularly.

From the platform, East Finchley takes my breath away. A pair of glazed and rounded stairwells rise to the street level station, and these are one of the station’s truly outstanding art deco features – in fact I might go so far as to say one of ANY station’s truly outstanding features. From the street the exterior is good, especially where you can see the stairwells, but not quite as good as the platform view. Particularly worthy of note is the stylised art deco sculpture, The Archer, by Eric Aumonier. Some sources say that it symbolises the link with the Royal Forest of Enfield. Others say that it is pointing its arrow in the direction of Morden, the other end of the longest tunnel on the network. For all that I know this may well be true. Even if it isn’t, the whole station is a fine piece of art deco, and must have been quite inspiring when it was first unveiled in 1940, considering what the country, and London and its citizens were going through at the time.

This may sound morbid, but I like a good cemetery, and the older I get, the more I like them. What has this got to do with the price of tea? Only that all I know about Highgate is that it is home to Highgate Cemetery, one of London’s great cemeteries, and buried there is none other than Karl ‘Lock up yer horny handed sons of the proletariat’ Marx. I visited the cemetery in the mid 80s. Not, I might add to pay homage to the misguided political theorist. No, it was because my mum always used to derive great pleasure telling us that Karl Marx is buried next to a man called Spencer – Marx and Spencer, see? Well, I wanted to see if this was true or a load of toffee. It turned out to be not completely true, but it has to be said that the old beardy’s tomb is directly opposite the poet Herbert Spencer. So I’m happy to call that one an honourable draw. As for the station, well some original buildings from GNR days do remain, and they are far more inspiring than the current entrance, as the picture should show. Basically it’s a hole where the walkway upwards breaks the surface. Charles Holden did originally design some proper station buildings, but the war came along and put paid to any of that. Shame.

Archway station is what I’d expect as we come closer to the centre of the Northern Line, a gloomy dose of seriousness. I could weep to think that there was a Leslie Green station here once, which was replaced by a Charles Holden station, which was replaced by, well, this. The station is situated at the bottom of the uninspiring Archway tower, a high rise block of little obvious aesthetic merit, and frankly is a pretty good example of why people generally don’t rave about civic architecture from the 1970s. OK, so it’s not all concrete, but even the tiled parts of the walls are dark and uninspiring. Why did we do this? In fact, why do we still do this? Port Talbot has had a new station building built within the last decade – faced for the most part with grey metal and grey bricks. The town has a poor enough image as it is, without this symphony of dullness and depression greeting them as they exit the buildings. I look for a silver lining to Archway station, but can’t find one, so duck back inside to move on.

It proves to be a wise decision. Apart from adding “Parsons Green – definition – the guilt money paid reluctantly to the local vicar when he asks for a donation to the church roof fund.”, Tufnell Park proves to be our first Leslie Green station of this trip. I remember that our previous trip introduced us to Chalk Farm, the finest Leslie Green station I’ve yet seen. This isn’t quite that good, but it’s really quite impressive. Three windows on the side this time, and I always think that Leslie Green stations look particularly good on a corner site like this. I notice that there’s a permanently closed ticket office, but whatever the case the staff who work here seem to be doing a sterling job keeping the place looking very spruce. Mind you, if you worked in a building like this, you’d probably want to keep it looking this good. Whereas if you work in Archway, you probably get issued with free anti-depressants.

Ah, the vagaries of the English language! I emerge from the impressive 5 arched façade of the Leslie Green station at Kentish Town, and immediately set about googling to find out what the connection with Kent is. Non-existent, apparently. It comes, supposedly from caen-ditch – the bottom of a waterway. There you go. Shame. I was looking forward to seeing oast houses, hop poles and strawberry fields. I shall stop that now, or my relatives in Kent will not forgive me. The station has both under and overground platforms, since it connects with national rail services as well as the Northern line. I have read that there used to be a South Kentish Town station between this one and Camden Town, so I begin the walked section here. It’s only about 15 minutes, and before then yes, joy of joys, there is the disused South Kentish Town station, now a retail outlet, but still clearly the work of Leslie Green, even if the hemispherical windows lack the white paint on the frames.

Camden Town, you might remember from the previous trip, is the station which Madness originally wanted to be photographed in front of for the cover of Absolutely. This is a 4 window Leslie Green effort, and it’s perfectly fine. I do like the orange and yellow brickwork of the storey built onto the top of the station building. However it isn’t as good as Chalk Farm, the station which actually did feature on the album cover. I have to admit that I’m quite happy to note from the map that this is where the Edgware arm rejoins the main routes. Only 5 more stations to go, and the next is where I’ve planned to stop for a late lunch. 

Lots of people have an interest in Mornington Crescent tube station, and in many cases its because of the inscrutable ‘game’ on Radio 4’s “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue”. With me, my early 80s interest in the station was through the fact that there is a statue of Richard Cobden MP, the radical 19^th century MP very nearby. Back in the day, I used to believe that Richard Cobden was a direct ancestor. That was the story that my grandmother – born a Cobden – always told. Well, I’m sorry, but nope. He is, as far as I can tell, a distant cousin – we share common Cobden ancestors, but that’s it. As for the station, well, it was closed for one year to work on the lifts in 1992. It didn’t reopen until 1998, and then, one suspects, it was mainly due to a concerted campaign from fans of the afore mentioned radio show – the stars of which at the time reopened the station in a ceremony in 1998.

Any discussion of any part of the station buildings at Euston is probably sooner or later going to come to the Doric Arch, the gateway to the mainline terminus, which was demolished in 1962. Apparently the demolition of the arch was a huge spur to the nascent conservation organisations in the UK. In the 1990s, TV historian Dan Cruickshank discovered that at least 60% of the arch was dumped in the River Lea. There have been periodic discussions since about rebuilding the Arch, but as I write this not one stone has yet been laid. As for Euston underground well, with the honourable exceptions of Kings Cross, Waterloo and Paddington (District), the Underground stations connected to mainline termini have been largely functional and uninspiring, and Euston is no exception. There are good words to describe the entrance – grey being one, and depressing being another. This is all the more galling considering that there was a perfectly good Leslie Green Euston station building just down the road, being used until recently as an electricity sub station.

It's funny to think that we’ve only been to Kings Cross once before on our cumulative subterranean  odyssey, bearing in mind that no fewer than 6 underground lines stop here. Which means, my rudimentary schoolboy arithmetic informs me, that we have another 4 visits to make in future trips. It makes sense, then, to eke out my store of Kings Cross facts, so I’ll content myself for now with saying that the name derives from a statue of King George IV, erected here in 1830 at a crossroads. George IV was another Mastermind subject of mine, but I’ll say no more than this, the King’s reputation was such that I can’t imagine there were great howls of protest when the statue was removed a within 2 decades.

I’m pretty sure that Angel, where I alight next, is the first station I’ve visited to be named after a pub. Had Hampstead’s North End station ever been finished and opened, then there’s the distinct possibility it might have been named Bull and Bush, but the station buildings were never built. I say that Angel is named after a pub. Actually , it’s so named because it’s in the Angel district, and this was named after a pub, immortalised as Angel, Islington in Monopoly. The original inn is long gone. Coming back to Monopoly, it’s a sobering thought that so few of the properties on the traditional London board share names with tube stations. Even the 4 stations themselves have one cuckoo in the nest, Fenchurch Street, which is not on the network. If we’re being pedantic, and disallowing Whitechapel/Whitechapel Road and Oxford Circus/Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus/Piccadilly then there’s the other three stations, Leicester Square, Bond Street and , er, that’s it. Parts of what are now Charing Cross Station were once called Trafalgar Square, and there has also been a Strand station in the past, but that’s about it. This probably says more about Waddingtons, who based their choice of properties on a weekend visit by one of the family who apparently was not the least bit familiar with London. As for the station, well, making my way from the platform to the exit involves riding the longest escalator on the network, a vertigo inducing rise of 90 feet in 200 metres. The entrance itself is housed in what looks to be a 1930s block, and although it tends to be cast in shadow by the ubiquitous blocky canopy, the arrangement of windows is not unpleasant.

It's mid afternoon, and I realise that I haven’t eaten lunch yet. My sandwiches have been sitting in my rucksack for too long to have done anything to improve the flavour, and so I decide to continue to my last stop for today, Old Street, and then see if there’s anything hot on offer within reasonable walking distance. When I exit from the station I see that it’s completely sub surface now, the previous Stanley Heaps designed station having been replaced in 1968. Still, one saving grace I discover is that there’s an Italian restaurant very close by, with excellent reviews for its pizza, which I am happy to report are no exaggeration.

When I leave the restaurant I see that there’s still a few hours of daylight left, and make a snap decision to push on at least one more stop. What with stations on the line I’ve already sketched, today’s total so far is 15, and if I can just do one more today, then all that will leave for tomorrow is the stations south of the river, from London Bridge to Morden for the next trip.

Moorgate is a name with resonance to anyone old enough to remember the 1975 Moorgate tube crash, in which over 40 people were killed, and over another 70 injured. The driver made didn’t stop at the end of the line, and the resultant crash was the worst ever disaster on the network in peacetime. Today, there’s a respectful memorial plaque to victims of the tragedy. In fact the whole mien of the station’s Millfields entrance is sombre. The street level story seems to be clad in Portland stone, and is topped by a block which looks to have been built in the early 20^th century. The arched entrances or windows on one side appear to have been filled in, which does nothing to enhance the building’s undoubted appeal. In terms of proportions, I’d say it is possibly contemporary with Leslie Green, but Wikipedia proves unforthcoming with details to either confirm or deny this.

I make a quick mental inventory, and find that I’m feeling pretty good. The expected bout of tube fatigue hasn’t really materialised. In fact, what I feel is a little quiet satisfaction. I’ve bagged another 16 Northern Line stations, along the stretch of the line I expected to be the most tedious. Into the bargain I’ve also bagged a disused Leslie Green building. On the next trip I’ll get to go south of the river, and that’s always interesting, not to mention the fact that I know there’s a run of Charles Holdens from Tooting Bec all the way to the end of the line. Bring it on! (Just not today, though.)

Northern Line Section One:Mill East to Edgware, Chalk Farm, To Warren Street and Waterloo.

After half an hour of trying to divide the Northern Line into 3 reasonably equal, digestible chunks, which didn’t involve passing through a station I’d already visited while doing this line, it struck me that this might be a suitable task to test Mensa applicants with. Then I remembered that I am actually a member of Mensa already, so I stopped whinging and got on with it.  

The problems were really caused by the line having two northern arms, and a loop through central London. Loops cause problems. With arms it’s relatively simple, work your way to the end of the arm and then walk to the nearest convenient other end of an arm. Which is why I decided to begin at Mill Hill East, and hike from there to Edgware. Now, that’s by far the longest hike so far on any trip, but it greatly simplified the task ahead of me. From Edgware I could work my way to Chalk Farm, a mere step of about half an hour, and then finish off by working my way around the loop to finish at Waterloo. This promised to be the longest day of any of my trips, with 13 stations, interspersed with 2 hours of walking. It would require a very early start, but, if I could do it, then I would avoid crossing my own Northern Line tracks, as per the rash rule I made at the start.

I stand outside Mill Hill East station at 6 am, humming to myself the Jam’s “Down in a Tube Station at Midnight”, although to be honest, ‘outside a tube station too early in the morning feeling cold and a bit peed off’ would be rather more appropriate. I store away the fleeting thought that it might be possible to compose a play list of songs about the underground for the long walk to Edgware, and instead concentrate on the station in front of me. Thankfully it’s worth looking at, although a couple of windows which have been bricked up suggests that it has seen better days. It’s a former national railways station and it looks like it, probably 19^th century. Alas, the colour of the brick does remind me slightly of some public lavatories, which is a shame because this is otherwise a nice looking station, and I have a slight pang as I remember that I’m not here to catch a train.

As I walk, I expend a bit of mental energy by trying to make up my tube play list. Warwick Avenue, by Welsh chanteuse Duffy is an obvious choice, and perennial favourites Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty, Waterloo by Abba and Waterloo Sunset come fairly quickly. After that though I’m struggling, and coming up with rubbish like Poisoned ‘Arrow (on the Hill) by ABC and even Hainault, Hainault Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House. I consider resorting to my limited knowledge of music hall songs such as ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow (Road)” and “If you’ll pay me fare you can take me up the Arsenal” (which I may well have made up.). But as we all know, resorting to Music Hall is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Trying to think of other joke titles – and failing – sends my mind off on a tangent and I think about an old Two Ronnies sketch where the two old codgers play a pair of London Underground guards, or drivers, who keep peppering their everyday conversation with the names of stations – “Just got some fertiliser to put on me dahlias – Yeah, turn ‘em green, that will (Turnham Green). Well, it made me laugh anyway. It’s funny the places your mind will drift off to when all it has to concentrate on is keeping your legs moving.

Eventually Edgware Station hoves into view, and I realise that I am now looking at the work of Stanley Heaps, in his own distinctive style before Frank Pick became quite so taken with the work of Charles Holden. I’m not quick to form an opinion about this particular mish mash of styles. I have nothing about columns per se, but using classical columns here just seems to me to be writing a cheque that the rest of the building can’t cash. Okay, there is a fairly appropriate cornice running the length of the building above the columns, but then above that, an ordinary raked tiled roof. There’s nothing the least bit classical about this, and it’s a shame because it dominates the building, and it means you have to look carefully before you start to notice that there are actually some rather nice details in the entranceway below the roof. The actual entrance is set back, several feet behind the columns, and this forms a nice shaded colonnade. It does overshadow the windows somewhat, but I do like the ornamental pilasters set into the wall, and the metal gates. Shame about that roof, though. Thinking about it, I believe I understand why Pick would look to Holden, who was designing stations at the southern end of the line, rather than Heaps. Essentially, Holden’s designs looked forwards, while this station harks backwards.

Hmm, I think to myself, that’s quite a serious observation. But then, to me, the Northern is quite a serious line. I’m not entirely sure why I have this feeling about the Northern, but suspect it may have something to do with the fact that the Northern line is black on the map. Colours are important. Whenever I’m teaching children about imagery in texts, the ‘language’ of colours isn’t a bad place at all to start. Now, here’s a thing you may already be aware of. The colours of the different lines on the tube map haven’t always been the same. On Frank Pick’s original map, for example, the Bakerloo Line was red, while the Central Line was orange, although not quite the bright ginger of the overground lines on the modern map. However, to the best of my knowledge, the Northern line has always been black.

In an effort to lighten all of this Northern line seriousness, I promise myself that I will try to improvise a limerick based on the next station name. Thankfully the map informs me that this will be Burnt Oak, and while waiting on the Edgware platform I rattle off

“A rather intelligent bloke

Is waiting to go to Burnt Oak.

While limericks making

His feet won’t stop aching

But long for an old fashioned soak.”

Yeah, not particularly funny, is it, although I do allow myself a wry smile as I realise that the phrase ‘an old fashioned soak’ is a pretty good description of my late father. But my smile soon fades and I blame Northern line seriousness for this. A stray thought reminds me that the nickname of the Northern line is ‘the Misery line’, and again, I come back to the unfortunate choice of mourning black for the colour of the line on the map.

 I have another go at lightening my mood, by letting my mind wander over the name, “Burnt Oak”. Does it, I wonder, hark back to the days of strange druidic rituals? Well, no. As I emerge from the station entrance, Wikipedia informs me that the earliest reference to the area by the name Burnt Oak occurred in 1754, and there is nothing to suggest that it ever referred to anything other than a field with a burnt oak tree within it. How down to earth. How serious. How Northern line. Well, at least the appearance of the station itself lightens the mood a little. I may have mentioned once or twice that I’m from Ealing, and parts of Ealing have some large and expensive looking housing from the first half of the 20^th century. This is exactly what the station reminds me of, and the entrances look like twin garages. It’s the sort of tube station you might have made out of lego during your childhood.

With the prosaic nature of the name of the previous station, I half expect to find that Colindale is named after a man called Colin Dale. Then I have a brief flight of fancy as I imagine Colin Dale as a dim witted cousin of Alan A Dale, who would have been the least merry of Robin Hood’s merry men, always wearing his codpiece around the wrong way, and taking from the poor to give to the rich. Hoping, but not expecting this to be the case when I engage google as I leave the station I find out that Colindale does actually take its name from people, but from the Colindale family who owned land in these parts a few centuries ago. Ho hum. The station itself, well I remember visiting it quite a while ago, when visiting the Colindale Newspaper Archives to see if I could find any local news papers reports concerning the suicide of my 3x great grandfather in 1888. Now, that’s an activity strangely befitting the Northern Line, if you want my opinion. The research, that is, not the suicide. Back then it was a typical 60s entrance in a row of shops. Ugh, 60s architecture. Why is it that a decade which was celebrated for its fashion, films and music produced such awful buildings? That’s gone though, and a, well, a box has replaced it. It’s neat and tidy, and looks very new, and there’s a bit of glass and stainless steel on the roof to catch the eye. I just can’t help being reminded of the kind of shops that you get in airport departure lounges, though. It looks plasticky.

This is not an accusation that can be levelled at Hendon Central Station. As I exit I’m struck by the classical columns, and think back to Edgware Road. Not without reason either, since this station, like that, was designed by Stanley Heaps. I think that the classical portico works a lot better here. It projects forward from the contemporary block it joins onto, which means that the cornice isn’t topped by an inappropriate tiled roof, but by rather elegant metalwork, similar to the gates at Edgware. This station, while it still harks back to the past, at least has a sense of confidence about it. With its elegant colonnade, it is unashamedly what it is, and I can appreciate that, even if it is rather out of character with the 1930s block it is part of. I’m not surprised when google informs me that the building is grade II listed.

Here's something else that Google confirms. It has occurred to me that I’m pretty sure that none of the other underground railway systems I’ve used actually uses black for the colour of a line. I check them all, Tyne and Wear, Athens, Paris, Barcelona, Glasgow, Prague, Budapest, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Vienna and find that although, with the exception of Glasgow they all use a map based on the London one, none of them colour a line black. Glasgow’s of necessity looks different, because the Glasgow Subway is one continuous loop, but it’s a fetching mixture of orange and grey. I make a mental note to suggest to the powers that be that they consider changing the colour of the Northern Line on the map in line with current European practice. Which brings about its own spectroscopic flight of fancy while I consider what colour it could actually be instead. All of the primaries are taken already, as are secondaries purple and green. Since the East London line passed over to the Overground, orange is not currently used for an Underground line. However, it is used for the Overground, which features in the map, and so is out of contention. Maybe a lime green which would be sufficiently lighter than District line green would work, in the way that the contrasting blues of Piccadilly and Victoria lines work.

Such thoughts are abruptly ended as the train pulls into the grade II listed Brent Cross station. The name Brent Cross may irresistibly conjure up a view of bright and shiny retail outlets, but the station is another expression of Stanley Heap’s preferred ‘suburban classical’, and I have to say that it’s a station which rather highlights the schizophrenic nature of this particular medium. The entrance itself is a nice interpretation of a stripped back neo classical style, with a fine colonnade which is, if anything even more impressive than Hendon’s, but oh, that suburban 1920s thing with the tiled roof going on behind it just jars completely. Google throws up one interesting fact about the station. When it was originally planned before the outbreak of World War One, the planned name for the station was Woodstock. No idea why, but it certainly wouldn’t fit with the Northern line’s staid and serious image now.

I have never been to Golders Green before, and to be honest my only knowledge of it is as the site of a famous crematorium, and also for being home to a large Jewish community. Not that I think this has any bearing on the station. Up until the opening of the station at Brent Cross in 1923, Golders Green was the end of the line, and the station building, I believe, dates back to 1907. There’s a difference between seriousness and importance, and Golders Green station looks important. The station reminds me a little of some of the older stations at the Eastern end of the District line. The layout is completely different, but the orange brickwork and some of the ornamentation is similar. Apparently the station was built as part of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, back in the days when railway companies believed that you had to put the name of every station in the name of the company. This railway was one of the ones bought by the UERL before World War One.

The Underground is home to a number of ghost stations, that is, stations which were closed down. A significant number of station buildings of these do still exist, while others still have traces that can be seen from the tunnels. As far as I know, though, there’s only the one ghost station that was never actually opened in the first place. Between Golders Green and Hampstead there was originally supposed to be another station, which would have been called either North End or Bull and Bush. I believe that platforms were built, and the remains can be seen.

Hampstead does exist, though, and glory be, it’s our first Leslie Green station of the day. You know where you are with Leslie Green. Which is a funny thing to say since there are Leslie Green stations all over Central London, but you know what I mean. Even the Northern Line’s natural serious mien cannot stop the spirits rising with my first glance of ox-blood terracotta tiling. As Leslie Green stations go this is a relatively modest affair, with just the two semi circular windows on either side, and another over the entrance. I have no idea if counting the semi circular windows is the official way of assessing Leslie Green stations, but hey, it works for me. Google chucks up a plethora of facts about this station, not the least of which is that the tunnels are the deepest on the network. One thing I was surprised about as the train pulled into the station was that the tiling on the wall actually spells out the station name as Heath Street. Wikipedia tells me that the station was originally going to be called this, but the name was changed to Highgate before opening, but after the tiling had been completed.

The next station we visit, Belsize Park, is also a Leslie Green station. This one has a façade with 5 windows, and the whole thing looks beautifully proportioned. Which goes quite nicely when you think about it, since the name ‘Belsize’ is taken from bel assis in French, which translates as well situated. Which sends a thought racing across my mind that there is a Belsize Avenue in Ealing, very close to Northfields tube station. Why it was named that, I have no idea. Coming back to Belsize Park, as with pretty much all of the Leslie Green stations I’ve yet encountered it’s well kept, and attractive. Suddenly a second rogue thought forces itself to the front of my brain. The song “Kayleigh” by Marillion, which was playing when Mrs. C. and I went on our first ever date in 1985, contains the line “Loving on the floor in Belsize Park”. One can only hope that it wasn’t the floor of the station. Mind you, this being the Tube, had it actually been the station, nobody would have probably said anything unless Kayleigh and her beau had lit up for a post coital ciggie.

I’ll be honest, Chalk Farm, as a name, is one of the more inscrutable on the network. After all, what is a chalk farm? It conjures up mental pictures of an honest son of the toil scratching his head, wondering why all of those chalk sticks he’d planted and watered had failed to grow into chalk trees. I briefly consider the possibility that it’s named after a farm owned by a Mr. Chalk. Actually, research suggests that this is by no means as silly as it sounds, since the area seems to be named after a land owning family, the Chalcots, and one of their properties. The station itself is well worth looking at, a beautiful Leslie Green construction boasting no fewer than 8 semi circular arched windows on its ox blood tiled façade, beating our previous record holder, Caledonian Road, which only had 6. What is particularly striking is that its built on a corner which forms quite an acute angle, and so the two sides angle towards us, in a way that recalls the famous Flatiron Building in New York City. It’s a tremendous piece of work, probably my favourite Leslie Green station so far. Chalk Farm is, of course, the station in front of which Madness pose on the cover of Absolutely. The story goes that they wanted to be photographed in front of Camden Town – as in the song – but there were too many people around.

I don’t hang around much longer, though, because it’s time to strike out cross country to Warren Street. It’s only noon, but that mean’s I’ve been going for 6 hours. To be fair, a lot of this time has been spent standing outside stations, googling details and noting them down in my little book. The sun is only just over the yardarm, but I don’t care, it’s sandwich time. I use the fact that I’m eating as an excuse for the fact that my pace rarely rises above that of an amble, but I’ve already broken the back of today’s trip, so I don’t mind. Although there’s still 7 stations to go today, 3 of them have already been sketched on previous trips.

By the time I arrive outside Warren Street station I feel as if I’m back in Central London. The current station was built in 1933, at a time when escalators were installed, and it was designed by – be still my beating heart – Charles Holden. The ground level entrance is unassuming, but the semi-circular block above it is very striking. I don’t know if this was a later addition, but I doubt it since the design of the block seems contemporary with the station.  As I stand on the platform waiting for the next train, I can’t help noticing that this is another of those stations which displays a certain uncertainty about naming. The station has been called Warren Street for all bar one year of its existence, but for the first year it was called Euston Road, and that’s still what the platform tiling says. That's not necessarily such a problem, however if this was repeated in the next station, then I think that this might cause some weapons grade confusion.

Yes, it would cause real problems if Goodge Street station still had its original name on the platform. For a little while after the opening, the station was actually called Tottenham Court Road, while what is now called Tottenham Court Road was called Oxford Street. Well, Goodge Street it became, and this name ultimately derives from a Mr. John Goodge who owned land in these parts back in the early 18^th century. To be honest, Goodge is a name which could have stepped straight out of the pages of Charles Dickens – maybe it might have been what Scrooge changed his family name to after he reformed. The station building is another little Leslie Green gem. The two semi circular windows top the two entrances, and give the building a pleasing symmetry. The block on top of it is of a similar style, although not faced with ox-blood tiles, and the fact that the buildings on either side of the station are shorter just adds to its appeal.

Tottenham Court Road station is a short walk away, but walking doesn’t even enter my head, bearing in mind that I’ve already sketched the station on a Central Line trip. So the next time we stop its at Charing Cross. When I first started at Uni, I always used to take the East London Line from New Cross or New Cross Gate, but I soon discovered that National Rail from either of these stations was far quicker and more convenient, and thus Charing Cross became my station of choice. Well, a lot of water has flown under the bridge at Charing Cross station since then. As I stand outside the mainline station by the reconstructed Cross, Google starts to churn out chapter and verse about the complicated history of this station. The biggest change that I notice about it since the mid 80s is that the Jubilee Line don’t stop here any more. The much repeated truism about this station is that it’s quicker to walk from here to Embankment than to take the train, and certainly the Underground station here is a station of long corridors and walkways. Well, there we are, tube stations at mainline termini aren’t often much to write home about.

We’ve already bagged Embankment, and so it’s straight on to the last station of this trip, Waterloo. The entrance that I’ve sketched really caught my eye as it is so clearly inspired by the work of Leslie Green, although carried out in modern materials. I like it as an act of homage, although I’m not saying I’d want to see every station rebuilt in this fashion. But hey, it’s mid afternoon, and my work for the day is done. Yes, when you get right down to it I’ve only bagged another 13 stations, but today wasn’t so much about quantity. Today is about taking care of every station on the trailing arms, and on the Waterloo branch, which I’ve. This means that the 33 stations that remain form one continuous line. When you go on the trains themselves, the lines are usually represented as horizontal lines, and so far my inclination has been to travel from left to right, so that pretty much concludes that the next trip will start from High Barnet.

Coming back to this trip, though, one of the reasons for my excitement at reaching Waterloo is that I’ve as well as completing this trip, I’ve also just completed a bonus line, the Waterloo and City. Alright, it only has two stops, Bank and Waterloo, but I don’t care, it’s done. I first used the ‘Drain’ in the 70s, when it was actually run by British Rail, and had trains which looked like tube trains, but yet were different from those running on other lines. Completing a bonus line should happen again with the Circle Line, but I should be a lot closer to completing the whole challenge when this happens.

Central Line Section 3: Wanstead to Epping

I start at Wanstead, bright eyed and bushy tailed. I’ve never travelled on the Hainault loop before – in fact I’ve never visited any of today’s stations before, and so we have the excitement of the new if nothing else to sustain us through today’s trip. 

This is an excitement which even the rather run down and depressed appearance of Wanstead station does little to dampen. I use my phone to google the station on Wikipedia and I’m surprised to see that it’s a Charles Holden design. Maybe I shouldn’t be, bearing in mind the tower, which thus far has seemed a feature only used by Holden and followers of his style. I suppose it’s the drab colours, and the lack of glazed panels – although there are some on the other side of the tower that I discover when I take a quick walk around the outside. Like many Central Line extension stations, this one was started before, but not finished until after World War two. Before reaching the station, we went underground, which I really wasn’t expecting this far out of the centre of London – it’s one thing for a tunnel to continue out into the suburbs, but quite another for one to start like this.

Thus prepared by the previous station, I’m pretty ready to identify Redbridge as the work of Charles Holden. For one thing the red brick tower with the glazed panels is clearly either the work of Holden, or of someone consciously using his style. Then there’s the glazed circular booking hall rising above the entrance – it isn’t as imposing as Arnos Grove, but then few other stations are. I’ll be honest, it’s a very short journey from platform to street level considering that this is a ‘tube’ that is deep level station as opposed to cut and cover, which it feels much more like. Still, let’s concentrate on the exterior. The canopy with the station name and the entrance underneath it both gently curve around the booking hall, and all in all it creates a very pleasant and harmonious appearance. I’m not surprised when Google coughs up the information that it is in fact a listed building.

I have a lot to say about Gants Hill Station, very little of it about the exterior though. Basically the station is underground, with entrance made via pedestrian subways from the roundabout above. That’s it. However, inside, that’s far more interesting.

This is one of the last stations designed by Charles Holden. Now, going back to the 30s, the engineers of the Moscow Underground, now the busiest in Europe, were very interested in getting ideas from London, and I believe that Charles Holden himself was consulted. Okay – one result of the Russian engineers’ visits to London was that the word ‘voksul’ was adopted for metro stations in Russian. Why? Because, allegedly, they believed that Vauxhall, as in Vauxhall station, meant station. I’ve yet to find any proof to the contrary of this idea. Holden himself was inspired by the designs of the station interiors on the brand new Moscow metro, and this bore fruit with the interior of Gants Hill. The spectacular barrel vaulted concourse with its art deco uplighters immediately transports me back to memories of bad spy movies, and I half expect the gentleman sitting on the other end of the bench to sidle up to me, and whisper “I hear that in Leningrad the weather will be clement.” in an Eastern European accident. I’m mildly disappointed when he doesn’t.

However, it’s hard to be disappointed when the sun is shining outside in the world above, and each station is offering something different. This is certainly true of Newbury Park station. Now, strictly speaking, the interesting concrete structure isn’t all the station entrance, but rather a bus shelter containing the station entrance, and more importantly a grade 2 listed bus shelter. Now, I’ve no idea how many bus shelters are listed buildings, and if you know, please don’t write in and shatter my illusions. But I will admit that when I hear the words ‘listed’ and ‘building’ , then bus shelters are not what are usually conjured up in my mind’s eye. This is a remarkable structure though. Designed, not by Charles Holden, unsurprisingly, but Oliver Hill, the concrete arches hold up a copper covered roof. Now, I’ve very sorry but I do like a copper covered roof, which probably has something to do with the fact that the church in which I was christened, St. Thomas the Apostle in Hanwell, has one. I love the shade of green that copper goes when it reaches a certain age, as shown by the Statue of Liberty in New York. Many people don’t know that it’s made out of copper sheeting over a steel frame, and that for years after it was first erected it was actually copper coloured. Coming back to Newbury Park, the building was originally designed in the 30s, and seems a remarkably futuristic design. Oliver Hill himself had designed other wonderful art deco buildings, including the masterpiece Midland Hotel in Morecambe. Newbury Park is our second station to have won a design award in the 1951 Festival of Britain, probably because it wasn’t completed until after World War Two.

If this part of the Hainault loop had a motto, it might well be – and now for something completely different, since Barkingside, the next station, is precisely that. Well, completely different from the stations that have preceded it anyway. It’s very much the oldest looking station we’ve encountered so far on this particular trip. Barkingside looks like an Edwardian national railway station, which is exactly what it started life as. Google coughs up the gobbet of information that it was opened in 1903, and probably designed by the Great Eastern Railway’s chief architect, W.N. Ashbee. What’s not to like here? Well, the concrete rendering which reaches about a third of the way of the wall of the main part of the building doesn’t do much to enhance the appeal, but other than that, it’s the kind of thing that’s always pleasing to my eye. I especially like the cupola on the roof directly above the entrance. The whole thing is just a little reminiscent of my primary school. I shouldn’t be really surprised about this, since there was a spate of school building in England and Wales during the last few years leading up to the First World War. Both my primary school, and two of the blocks in the school in South Wales in which I taught for almost 30 years were built in 1913. And having loved my time in both of these schools, looking at this kind of architecture brings on a pleasant glow of nostalgia.

In a way it’s a bit of a shame for Fairlop that I visit the station straight after Barkingside. I alight under beautiful white painted wooden Great Eastern Railway canopies, and my expectation is that this is going to be my second Edwardian railway station in a row. Stepping outside this prediction is confirmed, and it’s a perfectly nice little station, other than the fact it’s not as impressive or quite as decorative as Barkingside, which we’ve just visited. It’s a bit of a shame, since the platforms themselves are amongst the nicest I’ve seen on the Central Line at all. Everything looks freshly painted. The iron work holding up the canopies is gorgeous, and for a moment I am tempted to start acting out a scene from The Railway Children. My Jenny Agutter impression hasn’t improved with age, I’m afraid.

Well, after such a run of fine and interesting stations, we had to be brought back to earth at some time, and Hainault achieves this. It’s not that it’s ugly, but just that it’s nondescript, which makes it difficult when you’re trying to descript it. To be fair, it’s difficult to think of any of the stations I’ve seen which has really benefitted from being built on the side of a viaduct or a raised section of line. I liked Greenford for example, but I don’t mind saying it might be even more appealing if it was completely free standing. Coming back to Hainault, its layout and materials resemble a Charles Holden entrance hall, but without the benefit of a trademark Holden ticket hall. The cast iron bridge casts over half of the entrance in what I’d guess is a perpetual gloom, and although the façade is brightened by the map and several posters, it doesn’t have any windows, which is a shame. I’ll tell you something else which is a shame. I always thought that this part of the world took it’s name Hainault through some connection with Queen Philippa of Hainault, wife of King Edward III. Apparently not. The spelling was changed from Hyneholt in the 1600s because of a false connection to her. Hyneholt, well, I’m not sure about the Hyne bit, but I know from my days studying Old English at University that holt – as in Northolt – means wood.

Talking of evocative names, the next station, Grange Hill, brings back memories of a long running school based TV drama series, with which it sadly has absolutely no connection. My meagre research has thrown up a couple of facts about the station itself. Work started in 1938, but wasn’t completed until after World War II. Heard that before? Of course. Well, how about this one. The station was hit by a V1 flying bomb ‘doodlebug’ in 1944. Another thing to add to the long chapter one could write about the London Underground in wartime. As it stands today, the station looks Holdenesque, ersatz rather than genuine Holden. I was unable to find out who actually designed it. From the canopy down, it’s Holden, but the ticket hall rising above and behind the entrance just doesn’t look quite right. It’s a little too low, and has windows all around rather than the glazed panels you’d expect from Holden. It’s perfectly alright as a building, but sadly, by following a Holdenesque plan this ends up just drawing attention to how it just isn’t quite as nice as a Holden station.

Well, from ersatz Holden we move now to another original 1903 building, but this time in a quite different style from Fairlop and Barkingside. The name Chigwell, to people of a certain age probably conjures up images of Sharon, Tracey and Dorian from the long running BBC sitcom ‘Birds of a Feather’ which was set in Chigwell. This sets me off on a train of thought, as to whether it would be possible to construct a Comedy Line linking underground stations which have a connection with comedy programmes. Immediately East Acton comes to mind – it was nearby Wormwood Scrubs prison which was used for the prison exteriors on the opening sequence of the 70s sitcom Porridge. Shepherd’s Bush for Steptoe and Son, and Tooting Broadway for Citizen Smith followed fairly hot on it’s heels. Reluctantly I drag myself from this pleasant reverie, and file it away for something to amuse me back on the walk from Roding Park to Buckhurst Hill. Which is not to say that Chigwell Station is not worthy of attention itself, because it very much is. Built for the Great Eastern Railway in 1903 I doubt very much that its changed much in the interim. I can’t help wondering whether the window frames are original, because they look very plain for the era. That doesn’t really bother me though, because above the canopy the façade has a pair of matched dutch gables. I love a dutch gable on an Edwardian or late Victorian building. So you can imagine, I was like a pig in clover on a  recent visit to Amsterdam. Even though I’ve never visited the station before, if I was to make a list about stations which have been connected to important things in my life, I would include it, because this is where Miss Walker lived – the area, not the station – before she became Mrs. Clark.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my journey around the Hainault loop, but I’m quite happy to leave the train and begin my walk at Roding Valley. Actually the sooner the better, since Roding Valley station itself veers more towards the eyesore than the sight for sore eyes end of the attractiveness of stations scale. It’s a single story, orange brick building, and like a lot of the Central line extension buildings it was commenced in the late 30s, but not completed until the 40s. It certainly looks like a 1930s building, but with a style such as modernism or art deco, because the buildings are relatively minimalist in terms of decoration compared to earlier public buildings, the details are vitally important, and if you get one thing wrong it can spoil the appearance of the whole building. So having a window boarded up has a really poor effect on this one.

Thankfully I have neither the excuse nor time to stand around looking, as I step off towards the main eastern arm of the Central Line, and the next station, Buckhurst Hill. There’s a definite spring in my step. The sun is still out, I’ve eaten my packed lunch, and there’s just five more stations to see before I can add the Central Line to my completed list. This is a mood which a leisurely half hour walk, and the sight of Buckhurst Hill station does nothing to dispel. It’s a very pretty little W.N. Ashbee Great Eastern Railway station from 1892, the oldest on this particular trip so far. Certainly when I visited the façade looked to be immaculately maintained with some gorgeous ornamental brickwork around the shallow arches of the windows. I’d lay odds that these windows aren’t original though, but hey, you can’t have everything you want all the time. I’m tempted to make an on the spot sketch of this little gem like building, but in the end decide that it would be more sensible to rattle off the next four stations in good time.

Even having a decent knowledge of the underground, as I like to think I do, I’m still capable of being surprised by what I see sometimes. My ignorance about this end of the Central Line, works to my advantage as I exit Loughton station and find I’m absolutely blown away by its design. It is unlike anything I have seen on any of the trips I’ve made so far, and I strongly doubt that there is another station on the network that is quite like it. And yet . . . Then it strikes me, the huge semi circular window above the entrance, in a rectangular block is a little reminiscent of the façade of King’s Cross station, albeit that has two windows, and towers at either end. Here’s the funny thing. The façade of King’s Cross is much, much older than Loughton, yet Loughton was actually designed by the LNER’s architect, in the 30s, John Murray Easton. King’s Cross, of course, was the main terminus for the LNER in London at this time. It isn’t what I would call a beautiful station, in the same way that King’s Cross is not a beautiful station if you’re comparing it to the yardstick of the Great Midland Hotel looming over neighbouring St. Pancras. But it is striking, almost magnificent in a way.

This rather makes me fear for Debden station. I just can’t seeing it living up to Loughton, and so in a way I’m quite pleased when I exit the building to see that it doesn’t really try. Its façade, which is something of an elongated shed with a flat roof, is at least enlivened by the raised ticket hall. However this itself is so low that it tends to peep rather apologetically over the station canopy. It’s glazed all around rather uninterestingly, and I can’t help wondering for a moment or two whether it might in fact be a later addition to the station. Taken all in all, the air of the station is of a building mumbling ‘nothing to see here citizens, get on with your lives.’ That’s fine by me, and I take advantage of this good advice, since the next station has one of the more sonorous and intriguing names of any station on the network, and I’m looking forward to seeing if the station building can live up to the promise of the name.

Having studied French, after a fashion, to A Level I’d always pronounced the Bois of Theydon Bois as ‘bwah’. It made sense to me. Bois is French for wood, and the next station is Epping, as in Forest. Some time ago, though, I was reliably and authoritatively informed that in the name of the station, Bois is pronounced to rhyme with noise. As I walk out of the train onto the platform I find that I am unable to stop myself from singing “Theydon Bois, Theydon Bois, laced up boots and corduroys.”A gent who looks to be of a similar vintage to myself smiles at me. For those who aren’t of a similar vintage to myself, I suggest you ask your parents, or failing that, your grandparents to explain that reference. Speaking of which, according to Wikipedia, the village has always been pronounced Boys or Boyce, and derives its name from the family who held the manor in the 1300s. Interestingly it was the railway which fixed the spelling at Bois. When the Great Eastern built their station here, the local parish clerk suggested this would be the best spelling, bearing in mind nearby Epping Forest. I apologise to those of you reading this who are currently thinking “I don’t need to know that, kindly leave the stage” but the fact is that I love finding out these little obscurities.

As for the station building itself, I can’t for certain say when it was built. Looking at it, I somehow doubt that it’s the original, since the window frames and the ornamental brickwork on some of the corners suggest a similar vintage to the 1903 stations we saw on the Hainault loop. It’s a pleasant place, although I can’t help wishing that the two storey building on the right had been left its original red brick rather than being painted with the brilliant white that it sported during my visit.

Epping is a name I once used in a long poem I wrote at University. Without going into too much detail, Dream Vision Poetry was a genre of poetry practiced in the 14^th century by Chaucer and some of his contemporaries. It inevitably involved the voice in the poem being spirited away in a dream, often to an idyllic, Eden-like setting which we would call by the latin term – locus amoenus. Got that? Okay, so in this poem I wrote,

“I looked to try and see where I was stepping.

I guessed locus amoenus, maybe Epping.”

This was more for the rhyme than anything else, since I’ve never been to Epping before and have absolutely no idea whether it’s a locus amoenus, a locus horribilis, or something in between. Actually, that’s still true, since I confine my perusal of the surroundings to the station buildings itself. They’re rather nice, rather reminiscent of Theydon Bois, although something of a mirror image since the two storey wing is on the left this time. Once again, I’m unable to conjure up any specific dates of construction, or architects’ name on the phone, but as with Theydon Bois I’m pretty happy that it’s Edwardian or late Victorian, which would make it originally a GER station. Which is where the line ends, or at least, where it has ended since 1994. In that year, London Transport ended the single track service between Epping and Ongar. I was always intrigued by this on the map, as I have memories of it being represented by a read and white line, and looking for all the world like a horizontal barber pole. The memory my be cheating me on this one, I admit. There have been short lived attempts to run services by private companies from Epping to Ongar since, but since that’s not part of the underground network now, I don’t concern myself with it.

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Three cheers for the Central line! The longest journey you can make without changing trains anywhere on the network is from West Ruislip to Epping, which is slightly more than a whopping 34 miles. This makes me even happier that I didn’t make a rule that I have to walk between every station. If that were the case then this challenge would take years rather than the months I’ve allotted for it. It has the 4^th greatest number of stations, after the District, Piccadilly, and the Northern line which boasts just one more. Not including Osterley and Spring Grove, which is no longer a station, I’ve now sketched 155 stations. That’s 57.4% or 31/54. I think a small celebration might be in order.

It’s fairly obvious which line I need to tackle next. There are 50 stations on the Northern Line, only five of which I’ve already visited on other lines. That splits nicely into three trips, and more importantly, it should take me to 200, leaving only a measly 70 to do on the remaining lines.