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Northern line

56. The exterior of Hendon Central

10 October 2012
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 3, Zone 4
5 Comments

A grand Central stationThis grandest of all grand Central stations looks out over a thunderously bustling intersection of roads, shops, subways and services. You emerge from its elegant collonade and delicate motifs into an environment that is anything but.

It’s just about possible to appreciate the idea behind the birthplace of modern Hendon, but the reality has been long since battered into submission. Best to linger a little longer among the pillars, especially if the weather’s on the turn.

Heaps of entertainmentI lived round here for two years and trained myself to co-exist with the noise. For the traffic never stops. One night there was a power cut and I went on to the roof of my building to see how much of the area was affected. Even though it was 3am the roads were still busy.

Three lanes of vehicles sweep down from one direction en route to Brent Cross and the North Circular Road. They charge past the other way heading out towards the M1. Bisecting them comes traffic to and from Golders Green and Kingsbury. A greater contrast with the surroundings of Hendon Central’s neighbouring station, Brent Cross, it is difficult to imagine. Yet both were designed by the same person, Stanley Heaps, and share if not a sympathetic location then a stubborn beauty.

Winter wonder-grand

I can vouch personally for how welcoming that entrance could be during winter.

It’s not a building that dominates or defines its surroundings in the same manner as its nearby sister. It cannot compete for attention with what has become an enormously intimidating adjacent road junction.

But this lends the station a rather attractive melancholy feel. Its greatness is now tinged with sadness. Hendon Central is becoming evermore a sentinel, isolated from everything around it by nature of its style and purpose, yet guarding a gateway to a more decorous way to travel.

It hasn’t always been like this. There are probably people still alive who’d say they can remember when Hendon Central was all fields. And they wouldn’t be lying.

53. The platforms at Clapham North

23 September 2012
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 2
16 Comments

Mind the gapsThere are only two stations deep below ground with platforms like these: this one, and the next stop south on the Northern line, Clapham Common.

I don’t claim greatness for these platforms on safety or accessibility grounds (though I’d be interested to compare the number of accidents per year at Clapham North with those at recently refurbished deep-level Northern line stations, like Angel or Mornington Crescent).

What makes them special is their rarity and their antiquity.

Passing trains Not everything that is old is worth preserving, just as not everything that is new is transient. By and large, the “right” bits of the 150-year-old Underground have been kept and restored, while the “wrong” bits are – after a long wait – being sorted out.

But the platforms here and at Clapham Common cannot be sorted out, because there isn’t room. A whole new tunnel would have to be dug. That isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Using these platforms is therefore something of a novelty yet also, in an odd way, a sort of privilege. Passengers aren’t treated like fools at Clapham North. We are trusted to use this eccentric (to our eyes) architectural arrangement, and not to blunder dopily on to one or other set of tracks while reading a newspaper or prodding at our phone.

For the occasional visitor there is also excitement to be felt when trains rush in from either direction simultaneously: a sensation compounded by being in a single contained space.

The platforms are islands of history, not just of convenience. They can’t be allowed to exist forever, and they shouldn’t. But for now, their latterday idiosyncracy renders them teasingly special.

No man is an island

51. The exterior of Brent Cross

14 September 2012
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 3
8 Comments

Heaps of charmWhen the retail complex that shares this station’s name was opened in the 1970s, a problem was created that has yet to be solved: how to persuade people intending to visit Brent Cross shopping centre that they should not use Brent Cross Underground station.

The two are far enough apart, with enough inaccessible and near-insurmountable road junctions in between, that it’s easier – and safer – for prospective customers to travel one stop further up the Northern line to Hendon Central and walk from there. Having once lived in the area for two years, I know this to be true.

I also know that, as a consequence of the bungled planning and construction of Brent Cross shopping centre, local residents (not consumers) are blessed with a rather lovely station whose bearing sits wonderfully at odds with its neighbourhood.

Because this is a building that is Brent all out of proportion:

Brent out of all proportionIt was designed by Stanley Heaps, opened (as simply ‘Brent’) in 1923, and then as now defies the template of the surroundings. In its early days this meant radiating the deportment of an ornate cricket pavilion that has tumbled through time to the Roman era and back again, while all around was farmland. Nowadays this still means radiating the deportment of an antiquity-wrought sports venue, but in 1950s suburbia.

The contrast is startling but a pleasure to witness in action. There’s something rather charming about the sight of barely-conspicuous folk using such a boldly conspicuous creation, with its stylishly-sparse colonnades and homely-tiled roof, and thinking nothing unusual of it.

It’s a sensation that is heightened just round the corner, where you can find a little-used second passageway to the station, together with a proper Underground roundel, in just about the most unexceptional street you can imagine:

Ssshhh!Imagine if you lived in that house right next to the entrance. You could stay indoors until your saw a train in the distance, amble outside, down the path, through the station and up on to the platform ready for the very moment the carriage doors opened.

Granted, none of this is any use to you if trying to get to Brent Cross shopping centre. But then you shouldn’t have got off at Brent Cross station in the first place.