Hendon Central tube station

Hendon Central
Station entrance
Hendon Central Location of Hendon Central in Greater London
Location	Hendon
Local authority	London Borough of Barnet
Managed by	London Underground
Number of platforms	2
Accessible	Yes [1]
Fare zone	3 and 4
London Underground annual entry and exit
2012	6.83 million[2]
2013	6.84 million[2]
2014	7.40 million[2]
2015	7.97 million[2]
Railway companies
Original company	Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway
Key dates
1923	Opened as terminus.
1924	Became through station
Listed status
Listing grade	II
Entry number	1401082[3]
Added to list	20 July 2011
Other information
Lists of stations	DLR Underground National Rail Tramlink
London Transport portalCoordinates: 51°34′59″N 0°13′34″W / 51.583°N 0.226°W

Hendon Central is a London Underground station in North West London on the A41.

The station is on the Edgware branch of the Northern line, between Colindale and Brent Cross stations, and is on the boundary between Travelcard Zone 3 and Zone 4. Its postcode is NW4 2TE. It was opened along with Brent Cross (then called Brent) tube station on 19 November 1923 as the first stage of an extension of the Golders Green branch of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway. The station served as the terminus of the line's western fork until 18 August 1924 when the second and final section of the extension to Edgware was opened.^[4]

History

Hendon Central, like all stations north from Golders Green, is a surface station (although the tracks enter twin tunnels a short distance further north on the way to Colindale). When it was built it stood "in lonely glory amid fields", as one writer puts it, south of the old village of Hendon, which has since been swallowed up by London's suburbs.^[5] The station is a Grade II listed building,^[6] designed in a neo-Georgian style by Stanley Heaps, who also designed Brent Cross tube station in a similar style, with a prominent portico featuring a Doric colonnade.^[7]

The fact that the area was largely undeveloped allowed a hitherto unusual degree of coordination between the station and the surrounding buildings that were constructed over the next few years. The station was intended to be the centre and a key architectural feature of a new suburban town; it faces a circus 240 feet (73 m) in diameter that is intersected by four approach roads which provide access to all parts of Hendon and the surrounding areas beyond. For many years this was a roundabout known as 'Central Circus'; however it is now a crossroads controlled by traffic signals. Writing in 1932, William Passingham commented the integrated approach taken at Hendon Central as "an outstanding example of the co-ordination of road-planning with passenger station requirements." He noted, only nine years after the station opened, that it had already become the centre of an "ever-widening cluster of new houses" and accurately predicted that it would become "the centre of [a] small township", or what would now be called a suburb.^[8]

Connections

London Buses routes 83, 113, 143, 186, 324 and 326 and night route N113 serve the station.

References

1. "Step free Tube Guide" (PDF). Transport for London. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 June 2015.
2. "Multi-year station entry-and-exit figures" (XLS). London Underground station passenger usage data. Transport for London. April 2016. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
3. Historic England. "Hendon Central Underground Station (1401082)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
4. Rose, Douglas (1999). The London Underground, A Diagrammatic History. Douglas Rose/Capital Transport. ISBN 1-85414-219-4.
5. Jackson, Alan Arthur; Croome, Desmond F. (1962). Rails through the clay: a history of London's tube railways. Allen & Unwin. p. 171.
6. "16 London Underground Stations Listed At Grade II". English Heritage. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
7. Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1999). London 4: north. Buildings of England, vol. 48. Penguin. p. 161.
8. Passingham, William (1932). Romance of London's Underground. Sampson Low & Co. p. 66.

Gallery

• 

  Island platform looking north, with the tunnel portal visible in the background

• 

  Island platform looking south

• 

  Roundel on southbound platform face, advising passengers for the R.A.F. Museum to alight at Colindale, one stop to the north

• 

  Another view of the entrance

External links

• London Transport Museum Photographic Archive
  • Construction of Hendon Central station, 1922
  • Partially completed station, 1923
  • Crowd waiting for the first opening of the station, 19 November 1923
  • Exterior of station on opening day, 19 November 1923
  • View of Platforms and tunnel entrances, 1924. Note rural landscape beyond station awaiting development.
  • Station building, 1929, now incorporated into a larger commercial building