North End tube station

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North End
Location
Place Hampstead
History
Opened by Never Opened
Planned by Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway
Platforms 2

North End (commonly referred to as Bull and Bush) is a never completed underground station, on the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR, now part of the London Underground's Northern Line). The station was to have been built at North End on the edge of Hampstead Heath and is located between Golders Green and Hampstead. The station site at the corner of North End and Wildwood Terrace is near the Bull and Bush public house (hence the nickname).

The CCE&HR was constructed in the first decade of the 20th century and opened on 22 June 1907. Although the platforms and some of the low level passages were excavated, station construction was abandoned after it was decided that the under developed nature of the area meant the station would not be well used. No surface building had been constructed by the time the station was cancelled.

Due to its location at the top of a hill, the station would have been, at 221 feet (67 metres) deep, the deepest on the entire Underground network. The current deepest is the adjacent Hampstead station to the south-east. The platforms still remain to this day bricked off from the tracks, and can be observed from trains travelling through.

How North End might have appeared on the London Underground Map today had open under the planned name
Enlarge
How North End might have appeared on the London Underground Map today had open under the planned name

During the Cold War a shaft to the platform was dug, and the abandoned station became part of the London Underground's civil defence preparations. As the tunnel was the deepest in the network, it was an ideal site. The role of the control centre was to manage the emergency flood gates placed throughout the tube network at the start of World War II. During this period, the building at the top was disguised as an electricity substation through the appropriate signage. The tunnel exit is now marked as an exit route from the underground system, and its function publicly acknowledged.

[edit] See also

Haxo - a never-opened station on the Paris Metro

[edit] External links

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