Hatton Cross tube station

Hatton Cross
Hatton Cross Location of Hatton Cross in Greater London
Location	Hatton
Local authority	London Borough of Hillingdon
Managed by	London Underground
Number of platforms	2
Fare zone	5 and 6
London Underground annual entry and exit
2011	2.93 million[1]
2012	2.96 million[1]
2013	3.08 million[1]
2014	3.22 million[1]
Railway companies
Original company	London Transport Executive (GLC)
Key dates
19 July 1975	Station opened as terminus
16 Dec 1977	Line extended to Heathrow Central
7 Apr 1986	Heathrow Terminal 4 loop opened
Other information
Lists of stations	DLR Underground National Rail Tramlink
London Transport portalCoordinates: 51°28′01″N 0°25′24″W / 51.4669°N 0.4233°W

Hatton Cross is on the Heathrow branch of the London Underground Piccadilly line. It is in Travelcard Zones 5 and 6 and stands between the Great South West Road (A30) and the Heathrow Airport Southern Perimeter Road.

The station, itself in Hillingdon, serves a very small residential community in Hatton, which is in Hounslow. The nearby area is either within the airport or mainly comprises its associated commercial warehousing and light industrial premises. "Hatton Cross" refers to the crossroads on the former coaching road leading southwest and is now applied to the overlying major road intersection immediately southeast of the station.

History

The station opened on 19 July 1975 in the first phase of the extension of the Piccadilly line from Hounslow West to Heathrow Airport and it remained the terminus until Heathrow Central opened on 16 December 1977.

The platforms at Hatton Cross are in a cut and cover tunnel. The platform tiling on the central columns features patterns derived from the British Airways Speedbird logo. The station building, a brutalist, concrete-and-glass, single-storey box, incorporates a busy bus station, which serves the airport and surrounding area.

Part of a Piccadilly route map sign showing the current arrangement of stations at Heathrow

For the new Terminal 4 at the airport, a single track loop was tunnelled from Hatton Cross to Heathrow Central (now called "Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3") with an intermediate new Terminal 4 station, which opened on 12 April 1986. The tube service to the airport then ran clockwise in a unidirectional loop from Hatton Cross to Terminal 4, on to Terminals 2 & 3, and back to Hatton Cross.

On 7 January 2005, the loop and Terminal 4 station closed and the tube service reverted to its previous two-way running between Hatton Cross and the Terminals 2 & 3 station while tunnels to the new Heathrow Terminal 5 station were under construction; a shuttle bus from Hatton Cross was provided for passengers travelling to and from Terminal 4. Service round the loop restarted on 17 September 2006.

From 27 March 2008, when Terminal 5 station opened, every other train of the twelve per hour arriving at Hatton Cross from London has taken the Terminal 4 loop and terminated at Heathrow Terminals 2 & 2. The alternate trains run direct to Heathrow Terminal 5, via Terminals 2 & 3.

On its opening in 1975, Hatton Cross was one of 279 active stations on the London Underground, the highest ever total; the number of stations in the network has since decreased to 270.

Just to the east of the station the Piccadilly Line briefly resurfaces to cross the River Crane then descends back underground again.

The British Airways Flight 38 accident occurred just west of Hatton Cross in 2008.^[2]

It was named after the crossroads of the Great Southwest Road and Hatton Road; there had not been an old stone cross there.

Connections

• Apart from being a tube/bus interchange, the station, at a limit of the Heathrow free bus zone, which makes this interchange a busy one.
• London Buses routes 90, 203, 285, 423, 482, 490, 555, H25, H26 and X26 serve the station.

References

1. "Multi-year station entry-and-exit figures" (XLS). London Underground station passenger usage data. Transport for London. June 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
2. Siddique, Haroon (9 February 2010). "British Airways plane crash caused by 'unknown' ice build up". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2010-02-12.

External links

• "Hatton Cross". Photographic Archive. London Transport Museum. Archived from the original on 2014-01-26.
  • Construction of the cut and cover tunnel near Hatton Cross, 1973
  • Hatton Cross station, 1975
  • Platforms, 1975
  • Ticket hall, 1975
  • Hatton Cross Station, 2001