Highbury & Islington station

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Highbury & Islington station is a National Rail and London Underground station, in the London Borough of Islington in North London. It serves the suburbs of Highbury and Islington. The name is often shortened to simply Highbury.

The station is on the Underground's Victoria Line, between Finsbury Park and King's Cross St. Pancras. It is also on the National Rail North London and Northern City lines. It is in Travelcard Zone 2.

[edit] History

The current station is an amalgamation of two older stations. The first stood on the site of the existing station. It was built in 1872 by the North London Railway (NLR) as an impressive Victorian-gothic building with a drive-in forecourt.

The original GN&CR station entrance, opposite the current entrance

The second station was on the opposite side of Holloway Road. It was opened on 28 June 1904 by the Great Northern & City Railway (GN&CR) on its line between Finsbury Park and Moorgate. This line and the station was operated by the Metropolitan Railway and its successors from 1913 until 1975, when it was transferred to British Rail, by which time it was known as the Northern City Line.

The NLR station was seriously damaged by a V-1 flying bomb that fell on Highbury Corner on 27 June 1944 and most of the station buildings were demolished. The original platform buildings on the westbound platform remain and there are some small remnants of the original entrance building to the left of the current station entrance.

The current single-storey structure was built in the 1960s for the opening of the Victoria Line on 1 September 1968 and provides a combined entrance for all of the lines serving the station. When the escalators to the deep level platforms were opened the GN&CR station building was closed. This unused entrance still exists, and has been recently refurbished externally.

The route of the Victoria Line was planned to provide the maximum number of interchanges with other Underground and British Rail lines and, where possible, these interchanges were designed to be simple cross platform connections between different services heading in the same direction. To facilitate this at Highbury & Islington, the northbound NCL platform was reallocated for use by the southbound Victoria Line giving the new line a direct link to the southbound NCL platform. Two new platforms were constructed for the northbound platforms of the Victoria and NCL. The northbound NCL tunnel was diverted to link to the new platform and the southbound Victoria tunnel connected to the old northbound NCL tunnel a short distance each side of the station.

Plan of Deep platforms at Highbury & Islington showing changes for the opening of the Victoria Line

[edit] Future

In 2007, the services run by Silverlink on the North London Line will be transferred to the control of Transport for London and renamed as London Overground. Added to the NLL services, in 2010 Highbury & Islington will become the new northern terminus of phase one of the East London Railway extension, which will also be operated as part of London Overground. It has been suggested that recent renovations to the still-closed GN&CR station entrance as of 2006 are part of this work.

Islington Council is currently considering redeveloping the site of the current station, and Highbury Corner generally, including possibly covering over the North London Line tracks and building an office block above the site.

[edit] External links

• A woodcut of the former NLR Highbury Station
• London's Transport Museum Photographic Archive
  • GN&CR station building, shortly after the Metropolitan Railway's merger into the London Underground, 1933
  • Side entrance to GN&CR building on to Highbury Crescent, 1934
  • Ticket hall of GN&CR station, 1935
  • Combined ticket hall, 1970
  • Northern City Line southbound platform, 1975
  • Combined ticket hall, 2005
  • Entrance to station (note remnant of original NLR building on left), 2005
• Train times and station information for Highbury & Islington station from National Rail
• Street map and aerial photo of Highbury & Islington station from Multimap.com