When searching online for solid information on Harold Stabler to inject into my otherwise flabby tribute to his efforts at Aldgate East, I’d learned that he hadn’t confined his creations just to one station. More of his ceramic whimsy could be found on the Jubilee line, at both St John’s Wood and Swiss Cottage.

At the time I presumed it was merely more of the same. As charming as Stabler’s tiles are, I didn’t think it worth bothering with a trip to see an identical batch in simply a different location. I’d had my fill of vexing heraldry and monstrous apparitions – or more accurately, monstrous heraldry and vexing apparitions.

Well, not for the first time on this blog, my presumption has now given way to contrition. For there is an entirely fresh selection of tiles on the Jubilee line, just as delightful and possibly more intriguing than their cousins over in the East End.

Who, I wondered, was Thomas Lord? Being a poor sportsman, and an even poorer lateral thinker, it wasn’t until I did more online searching that I discovered his local significance. I’m sure you can make the connection faster than me. Suffice to say I was, ahem, bowled over by my own ignorance.

The five birds pictured at the top of this post remain more of a mystery – as does this further quintet:

They look like representations of a young monarch, perhaps hailing from the Plantagenet dynasty. Another local connection, perhaps? Did Henry II once strike camp at what is now the Central School of Speech and Drama?

At both St John’s Wood and Swiss Cottage you can find a few duplicates of the tiles at Aldgate East; the Underground roundel, for instance, and the relief of the headquarters at 55 Broadway.

But these are the exceptions. Stabler treats you to a largely new and, for me, wholly unexpected spread of caricatures and motifs. The way they are laced along the platforms positively encourages you to wander up and down while waiting for your train, rather than observe the convention and remain sullenly rooted to a spot. This might not be very practical at rush hour. At all other times it’s a positive boon.

These are palaces of curiosity. Their walls turn the mundane into the magical. And their wares are as delicate as crystal.

98. The station at West Finchley

21 April 2013

Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 76-100, Objects, Sensations, Zone 4

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He adored West Finchley station.

He idolised it all out of proportion.

No, make that, he romanticised it all out of proportion.

To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a place that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of something by Dennis Potter involving trains and tragedy, and which allowed him shamelessly to reference one of the finest opening sequences in cinema history, despite not having anywhere near the same style, wit or imagination.

Yes, he was too romantic about West Finchley. Yes, to him it was also a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. And yet, in its own restrained, sparse, under-used, over-played, half-arsed, romanticised, metaphorical way, West Finchley was his station… and always would be.

I’d like to think everyone in London has special feelings towards their local Underground station. I’d like to think those feelings are mostly good-natured, though I’ll readily concede that’s not easy when your local station is Gunnersbury, Seven Sisters, or anywhere on the Bakerloo line north of Kilburn Park.

At the time of writing, my local station for five years has been West Finchley. I make no bones about the fact it was one of the reasons I chose to live in this area of north London. And I retain the same gushing affection towards it as I did the first time I ever had cause to pass along its platforms.

It’s not a very busy place. It’s staffed for only two hours on weekday mornings. At off-peak times, I’ll often find myself the only person waiting to get on a train, or the only person to get off. In both instances a part of my brain buried deep from any passing relationship with reality pretends it is me and only me for whom the station exists.

Fruit grows on the platforms of West Finchley. In summer, roses caress the barbed wire. In winter, robins perch on branches a few feet from your face.

All the functional furniture of an overground Underground station – trackside cables, wires for the loudspeakers – is tucked out of sight behind bushes and trees. The automated announcements are turned down low out of respect for the residents of nearby houses. There are waiting rooms on both platforms, with electric fires. And there are toilets and pocket maps and guides for continuing your journey and benches and buttons to press for help in an emergency and a lovely great big old iron bridge that used to have a lovely great bit old iron sign above it:

There’s also – shush! – a secret entrance. Transport for London describes West Finchley station as step-free, but unless you’re aware of the narrow passageway from an adjacent street that lets you on to the southbound platform, it’s the bridge or nothing.

To make this secret entrance even more of a secret, it’s only open for a couple of hours each morning. The rest of the time you need a special key to unlock the gates that guard the entrance. Such an arrangement could only exist, or rather only exist unnoticed, in a place like this, where things crossfade quietly between the quaint and the eccentric.

I’ve published this photo on the blog before, but I’m giving it another outing as I think it sums up for me what is the ultimate appeal of West Finchley station: its homeliness. Even in as extreme a concoction of weather, season and hour as this, the place still feels welcoming. It is safe and reassuring. It is somewhere you know you can trust. And, of course, for me it means just that: home.

I hope other people share similar sentiments about their own local station. West Finchley isn’t particularly special in the way most of the things on this blog are, in the sense of boasting great architecture or locations or even sensations. But it has the ability to be special to me. I might romanticise it out of all proportion, but that doesn’t harm anyone except myself. Which is what, ultimately, makes it so great.

97. The platforms at Holloway Road

15 April 2013

Designs, Numbers 76-100, Piccadilly line, Signs, Zone 2

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I’ve been a bit sniffy on this blog about the Underground stations designed by Leslie Green.

They’re the ones with the dark red exteriors made up of hundreds of glazed terracotta blocks. There are dozens of them around the city, and you’re bound to encounter a few of them on even the most fleeting of visits to London. Which is precisely why I have a bit of a problem with Green. To sum up what I’ve discussed before, if you’ve seen one of them, you don’t really need to bother with any others. The differences are superficial rather than significant, prompted by expediency rather than imagination.

Sometimes, however, a variety of riches can be found inside one of Green’s otherwise character-less creations.

Holloway Road has a good collection of his signature work for the interior of an Underground station. Both platforms were given a long-overdue refurbishment in the late noughties, which certainly benefited the tiling. Green’s trademark ‘Way Out’ and ‘No Exit’ designs for the walls of the platforms look in a pretty good state, considering they were first put up in 1906:

But for once, a Leslie Green station is more than the sum of its predictable, rudimentary parts.

As well as those familiar mock signs (based on his design for the ticket windows in the booking hall), Green sprinkles Holloway Road with a bit of glamour: more Cricklewood than Hollywood, as Ernie Wise would say, but still rather beguiling.

There are very swish ‘To The Trains’ signs in the little passageways between the adjacent platforms:

And there’s a much larger treat in the shape of the track-side wall of both platforms, which have been left completely free of advertising.

The effect is to highlight, dramatically and memorably, more of that instantly elegant original signage:

I’m not sure how many other places on the Underground can boast such a sparse, yet also so attractive a contrast. I know the effect is much the greater thanks to the majority of stations having these walls absolutely covered with adverts. But even taken by itself this is bold and, certainly for Green, unexpected.

Perhaps I’ve been a little too hard on the old bugalugs. Not a lot, mind. Just a little.

—150 great things about the Underground

An unofficial birthday salute to a public transport titan

99. The platform tiles at St John’s Wood

98. The station at West Finchley

97. The platforms at Holloway Road