Notting Hill Gate tube station

Notting Hill Gate London Underground

Entrance through a subway
Notting Hill Gate
Location of Notting Hill Gate in Central London
Location Notting Hill
Local authority Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Managed by London Underground
Number of platforms 4
Fare zone 1 and 2
London Underground annual entry and exit
2011 Decrease 17.36 million[1]
2012 Decrease 17.28 million[1]
2013 Increase 17.39 million[1]
2014 Increase 17.40 million[1]
Key dates
1868 Opened (MR)
1900 Opened (CLR)
1959 Combined Station Opened
Other information
Lists of stations
London Transport portalCoordinates: 51°30′32″N 0°11′49″W / 51.509°N 0.197°W / 51.509; -0.197

Notting Hill Gate is a London Underground station in the street known as Notting Hill Gate. On the Central line, it is between Holland Park to the west and Queensway to the east. On the District line and Circle line it is between High Street Kensington and Bayswater stations. It is on the boundary of Travelcard Zone 1 and Zone 2.

History

The sub-surface Circle and District line platforms were opened on 1 October 1868 by the Metropolitan Railway (MR) as part of its extension from Paddington to Gloucester Road. The Central line platforms were opened on 30 July 1900 by the Central London Railway (CLR). Entrances to the two sets of platforms were originally via separate station buildings on opposite sides of the road and access to the CLR platforms was originally via lifts.

The station name Notting Hill Gate had potential for confusion with the MR station to the north in Ladbroke Grove which was known as "Notting Hill" when opened in 1864, and renamed "Notting Hill & Ladbroke Grove" in 1880. This latter station eventually, in 1919, dropped its reference to Notting Hill, becoming "Ladbroke Grove (North Kensington)" in 1919 and, simply, "Ladbroke Grove" in 1938 (see Ladbroke Grove tube station).

Redevelopment

The station was rebuilt in the late 1950s and reopened on 1 March 1959 linking the two 'Notting Hill Gate stations' on the Circle and District and Central lines, which had previously been accessed on either side of the street, with a shared sub-surface ticket hall with escalators down to the Central lines. The escalators were the first on the Underground to have metal side panels rather than wooden. The new entrance also acts as a pedestrian subway under the widened Notting Hill Gate. The mosaic columns at the Southern Entrance were created in 2006 by local public art organisation Urban Eye.

Modernisation

The station was redecorated in 2010-11, with new ceramic tiling throughout the subway entrances, deep-level passageways and Central line tube platforms as well as a modified ticket hall layout.

During the redecoration works a section of lift passageways from the original 1900 CLR station, abandoned during the 1959 reconstruction, was rediscovered and found to contain a series of original posters. Images have been posted here Old posters at Notting Hill Gate station

A scheme was developed by the architects Weston Williamson to provide canopies over the entrances from the street,[2] but this has not been implemented.

Nearby places

Media appearances

In the 1968 film Otley, one of the Central line platforms at Notting Hill Gate (or a station pretending to be it) is where the assassin and coach driver Johnston, played by Leonard Rossiter, blows himself up opening a booby-trapped suitcase full of money.

The station and its staff featured prominently in the third episode of BBC Two documentary series The Tube, which first aired on 5 March 2012.

Layout

The westbound Central line platform is located above the eastbound platform because when the CLR was built it did not want to tunnel under buildings, and the street above was not wide enough for the two platforms to be side-by-side.

Connections

Gallery

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Notting Hill Gate tube station.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Multi-year station entry-and-exit figures" (XLS). London Underground station passenger usage data. Transport for London. June 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
  2. "London Underground Entrance Canopies". Weston Williamson Architects. Retrieved 28 April 2011.

External links

Preceding station   London Underground   Following station
Central line
towards Epping, Hainault
or Woodford (via Hainault)
towards Hammersmith (via Tower Hill)
Circle line
towards Edgware Road
towards Wimbledon
District line
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, September 10, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.