DIstrict Line Section One: Ealing Broadway to Richmond, Wimbledon, Olympia and Edgware Road

Section One: Ealing Broadway to Richmond, Wimbledon, Olympia and Edgware Road.

I’ll tell you the thinking behind this section. Between South Kensington and Ealing Broadway there are no fewer than 4 separate branches. Now, through my previous efforts on the District Line I’d already sketched all the stations on the main branch from Ealing Common to South Kensington. So, my thoughts were that I could start at Ealing Broadway, quickly polish off Kew Gardens and Richmond, then the Wimbledon branch with its 8 stations, then walk to Olympia from Earl’s Court, and then to High Street Kensington, to get back on the train to do all stations to Edgware Road. All in all 17 stations would still be less than I’d taken in between Acton Town and Kings Cross on the Piccadilly. This would then leave me just the 30 stations from Sloane Square to Upminster, which I felt it was reasonable to expect to do in two trips. 

I’ve never felt that Ealing Broadway was a very inspiring station. When I was a kid it was entered through part of a concrete block of shops built either in the 60s or early 70s, slightly better than a hole in the ground, but not a lot. However several years ago plans were unveiled to rebuild the ticket hall as part of the Crossrail project. And let’s be fair, you wouldn’t expect the artist’s impression to make the thing look bad anyway, but all the indications are that when it’s finished it will be a considerable improvement on what was there before. However, on my visit there was not a lot to see at all. Here’s a piece of trivia about Ealing Broadway. The District Line platforms have very rare surviving examples of the original underground roundel, which has the blue band on a filled in red circle, rather than the outer band of red and inner band of white that we know and love.  

Next stop for me was Turnham Green, having already sketched all stations between on my Piccadilly Line trips. You may well be thinking – hang on, I thought you sketched Turnham Green as well. Ah yes, so I did, but Turnham Green is the closest station to Ealing Broadway from which I could catch a train on the Richmond branch. Now, I’d already sketched the first stop, Gunnersbury, and so I didn’t alight until we reached Kew Gardens. The station came as a pleasant surprise to me, looking rather like a mid Victorian national railway station. With a little research I found out that this is exactly what it is, having been originally opened by the London and South Western Railway.  

I remembered Richmond station, the end of the line, from Saturday mornings of years gone by. On Saturday mornings my brother and I, and a couple of his mates, would often take the 65 bus from Ealing Broadway to Richmond to go skating in the old ice

rink, and the bus passed the station. Of course, I didn’t notice much about the architecture back in those days. When I say that it is built in Portland stone in an art deco style, you may well be picturing in your mind the work of Charles Holden, yet this is something quite different. This station was designed by James Robb Scott, who was the chief architect of the Southern Railway, who ran the national rail services through the station at the time at which it was built. I like it. It’s an interesting interchange as well since the station also serves the London Overground, and National Rail as well.

Now, I could have taken the train back up the line all the way to Earl’s Court, where I could switch to the Wimbledon Branch. However I really wanted to avoid retracing my own steps as much as possible. So, being as we were already south of the river, I had plotted out a route involving taking the 493 bus to Wimbledon. The journey of just less than an hour wouldn’t be as quick as using the underground, but on paper there was only about 10 minutes in it, and it had the bonus of making me feel as if I was continually making progress, rather than retreating back the way I’d come.  

Like Richmond, the main entrance to Wimbledon Station was constructed by the Southern Railway, although this one is a few years earlier. Unlike Richmond, though, there’s a lot of shiny chrome and brightly coloured plastic beneath the awning, and it all gives the station a far more modern feel than you’d maybe expect from a station that is over 9 decades old. Wimbledon doesn’t connect with the London Overground, but it does connect with National Rail, it will be on Crossrail, and even better, it has a tramstop! I had seriously considered not doing the Edgware Road line on this trip, so that I could ride the tram – I’m sorry but I absolutely love trams as well as metros – and take in a couple of relatively nearby Northern Line stations. But no, a challenge had been set. It may have been a pointless challenge, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to take it seriously. Ish.  

The next stop, Wimbledon Park, came as a bit of a surprise. I’m not entirely sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I found as I emerged from the station. It’s rather an odd looking place. It’s somehow too small to be impressive as a station, yet it’s too big to be a Victorian House, which it rather resembles, albeit that the roof is rather too steeply pointed. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if this one has been here since the line opened in 1889. All in all it’s somehow not quite as pretty as it maybe should be. The two chimney pillars on either side are unnecessarily blocky, and the newsagents which occupies most of the building’s frontage doesn’t do it many favours in my opinion. Nonetheless, variety is the spice of life, and this station is certainly different from most of what we’ve seen before.

I guess this is why Southfields station looked familiar, being another survivor from the opening of the line in 1889. In many ways it looks quite similar to Wimbledon Park – same too steep roof, same ugly chimney pillars. However, as you probably already know, Southfields is the closest station to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club – Wimbledon, and so it was quite extensively upgraded for the 2012 Olympics, where Andy Murray would win gold in the men’s singles and silver in the mixed doubles. No prizes for guessing which two weeks every year see the station at its busiest.

Like the two preceding stations, East Putney looks as if it may well be the original station building from the late 19^th century. Yet there’s quite a different design ethic going on with this station. There’s no pointed roof for one thing, instead a pleasing shallow pointed gable in the centre of the facade. The large hemisphere windows above the widows either side of the doorway, and above the doorway itself are a little reminiscent of Earls Court and Baron’s Court, and all in all this is just a very pleasant little station. And that’s us done south of the river with the District Line. 6 stations in all . Mind you, there’s less than 30 stations south of the river as it is, and that’s counting the DLR too. Stlll, while we’re talking about the river, the District Line is the only one to cross it on bridges.

Speaking of bridges, the next station is actually Putney Bridge. It’s another venerable building, as seems very much to be the case on this particular branch of the District. The station originally opened in 1880, and is literally just around the corner from the bridge from which it takes its name. This is a rather impressive building, especially when compared with the self-contained cosiness of East Putney, with which it shares a shallow gable above the entrance, and not much else. On a point of pedantry, the name of the station is a little misleading since it isn’t in Putney as such, being on the north side of the river and therefore in Fulham.  

Like Cockfosters on the Piccadilly, Parsons Green is one of those places that I have only ever heard of from the tube map. I don’t recall anybody either telling me that they came from Parsons Green, or that they had to go to Parsons’ Green. Still, in its favour the station building is the original, built by Mr. Clemence (Ray? Surely not?) under the supervision of John Wolfe Barry. Wolfe-Barry’s most impressive contribution to London is probably Tower Bridge. You can see it was built in the same era as the previous two stations, although this is a rather more modest affair, interestingly tacked onto the side of a viaduct.

So, just when I was really starting to expect all of the stations on the Wimbledon branch of the District Line to be Victorian relics, I arrived at Fulham Broadway. You may remember how the Hammersmith station serving the Piccadilly and District Lines is entered through a 90s shopping mall? Well, in the noughties the old station building was closed, and entry has to be made through the Fulham Broadway Shopping Centre. Like most people of a certain age, my main memory of the station prior to visiting it on this trip was from Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ single ‘What A Waste’ where the lyric goes – “I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station.” To be fair, all I saw when I visited were automated barriers, but there you go.

So to the last stop on the branch – or the first if you’re coming from the other direction – West Brompton, and after the shock of the new at Fulham Broadway we’re back to the Victorian ethic of East Putney and Putney Bridge. I’m quite glad about this, since I’d made up my mind to do a second walked section. I’d worked out that I could pretty much follow the rail route to Olympia via Earl’s Court on foot, and then get back on the train at High Street Kensington. This would mean that I could avoid the hassle of changing trains, and hanging around at Olympia. By my reckoning I could get to High Street Kensington if I got a bit of a wiggle on. Then that would just leave the 4 other stations ending in Edgware Road, and my marathon day mopping up the western branches of the line would be complete, without me having to double back along any of the lines. 

Olympia is only open at weekends, and for special exhibitions. Frankly, it isn’t much to write home about. I get the feeling that it’s far more important as a national rail station than as a tube station, and as a result the buildings are 1980s-era British Rail crap. They’re the sort of thing you buy at the end of a shopping expedition when you’re patience has been exhausted, and you’ll buy any old rubbish just to bring the ordeal to an end. I had a university friend who lived in a flat just around the corner, which come to think of it was a hell of a commute for her considering that we were attending Goldsmith’s College in New Cross, still, it was memories of this time in my life which reminded me that it wasn’t all that far to High Street Kensington.

I had a feeling, a half memory, that the station at High Street Kensington was similar to the Piccadilly Line station at Knightsbridge. I suppose that it is in as much as it’s built into a parade of very large shop buildings. But at least there’s a sense of style about it. The large hemispherical window , ad Portland stone pilasters either side of the entrance at least give it some atmosphere, and mark it out that this is something quite different from the commercial premises on either side. The Kensington Arcade, which contains the actual entrance to the station, has a real elegance and airiness about it as well, so coming after the disappointing station at Olympia this was something of a pleasant surprise.

Well, there I was, over 70 stations into the challenge, and Notting Hill Gate provided only the 3^rd hole in the ground so far, after Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus. The current, subsurface station opened in 1959. The rebuilding during the 50s, which saw street level station buildings removed, making way for a subsurface ticket hall which could be jointly used by both District and Circle lines, and also the Central line. The Central and District Lines do diverge at this point, but not by much. Next stop on the Central line is Queensway, and it is actually a very short walk from Queensway on the central line to Bayswater on the District. I know that because I often used to go ice skating in Queens, and you can clearly see one station from the other. As a matter of fact I met the future Mrs. Clark therein 1985, but that’s another story.

Bayswater itself is a rather attractive station, quite possibly the original building, although it’s one of those which probably isn’t best served by the blue canopy proclaiming the name of the station over the entrance. What with the ornamented balustrade, this looks similar in style to the District Railway style of Barons Court, and that's enough to make it a very pleasant surprise.

Nearing the end of the marathon trip, it wasn’t until I exited from Paddington’s impressive former Metropolitan Railway façade on Praed Street, I realised that Paddington is, in fact, 2 Underground stations – or rather there are two underground stations called Paddington, and what’s more the same can be said of Edgware Road, just along the line. I suppose that I can be forgiven for forgetting about this by the fact that the tube map does show them as a separate station, which they are not. The two stations form a fascinating contrast. The District Line uses the Praed Street Station, which proclaims its Metropolitan Railway origin proudly, and may date back as far as 1868. However the Hammersmith and City Line station, which originally opened in 1863 as the Western Terminus of the Metropolitan Railway has a very modern entranceway, which looks to be in a very similar style to the stations on the Jubilee line extension. We’ll get to them when we eventually mop up the Jubilee. At one time the two stations were distinguished by having Praed Street and Bishops Road appended to their names, but not now. 

I can, sort of, understand there being two underground stations at Paddington, what with the importance of the main line railway terminus. But Edgware Road? It beggars belief that there are the two separate stations only 150 yards or so apart , and separated by the Marylebone Road. The District, Circle and Hammersmith and City station was there first, being part of the original Metropolitan Railway 1863 line. Confusingly though, it looks more modern. The station was extensively remodelled in the 1920s, and it’s difficult to know just by looking at it how much of the Victorian original remains. I’d guess that

the frieze which declares that it is the Metropolitan Railway may well be original, but I can’t be certain. The Bakerloo Line station, though, is much easier to date, bearing the familiar Leslie Green hallmarks of ox blood tiles, and hemi-spherical windows. Apparently there have been moves and attempts to rename one of the two stations to end the confusion between the two.




In terms of stations visited, this trip saw me visiting fewer than I’d visited between Chiswick Park and Kings Cross. However it felt like more, and was a more exhausting trip. Maybe it was because the trip saw me visiting 5 ends of the District Line, and in my experience you can often end up waiting longer for your train to depart when you’re at the end of the line. Maybe it was crossing the river twice. Whatever the case, this was the first real time on the challenge when I felt I could honestly say that I didn’t want to think about another tube station for a while. Which was a bit of a pain considering the journey back which lay ahead of me.