London Underground by Design by Mark Ovenden

Author:Mark Ovenden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141991504
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

Aiming for the Heights and naming the Northern

Despite the deteriorating international situation, the NWP was optimistically pushed forward. Rebuilding the small halt at Ruislip Manor to a Holden design had begun in 1936 and was completed in 1938; this featured a unique ticket-hall clock with numerals replaced by orange circles fired into the cream-coloured tiles (p. 191). A similar scheme to rebuild the Eastcote halt, also completed in 1938, resulted in a wonderfully well-balanced design – another Holden ‘brick box with concrete lid’, incorporating on this occasion two exquisitely proportioned shop fronts complete with Streamline Moderne curved windows and mast-mounted bullseyes on each retail unit. But it was the design of three major projects that dominated the period: the Bakerloo was to have new tunnels north of Baker Street and take over the Stanmore branch (p. 198); the Central was being extended outwards with new tunnels in the east and electrification of suburban steam lines both east and west (p. 199); and the Northern line was to be extended north of Highgate (now Archway) via a tunnel and with further conversions from steam (p. 194).

Proposals were so far advanced before the war that building work was already well under way and new trains (the so-called ‘1938 Stock’, p. 189), signage (p. 189) and even destination roller blinds had been ordered. In anticipation of the complex arrangements for the full Northern Heights plan (so named because the areas to be served, such as Alexandra Palace, were on high ground), the poorly named ‘Morden–Edgware’ line, as it had by then become, was rechristened the ‘Northern’.41 Two of the line’s largest new stations were to be at East Finchley and Highgate. Bucknell worked with Adams, Holden & Pearson on the East Finchley station, which opened on 3 July 1939 (p. 194). The building is now listed and with its curved, two-storey glazed stairwells and beautiful bronze sculpture by Eric Aumonier, its easy to see why.42 Highgate, by contrast, never achieved its planned potential: re-modelled on the site of the original 1860s station, it was designed to have two levels, but the majority of the planned station was not built on account of the Alexandra Palace branch never being electrified.43

Harold Stabler (1872–1945), born in Cumbria, was a ceramic and metalwork designer influenced by Art Nouveau who produced a series of eighteen relief-moulded tiles depicting counties and landmarks served by the Underground (p. 197). They were employed at Aldgate East, Bethnal Green, Swiss Cottage and St. Johns Wood to such great effect that his name has become synonymous as a style on the system.

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