Holborn Underground Station

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Exterior view of the entrance area

Holborn is an underground station on the London Underground in the London Borough of Camden . It is in the Travelcard tariff zone 1, at the intersection of High Holborn, Kingsway and Southampton Row. The Central Line and the Piccadilly Line cross here on two levels, each with two platforms. The British Museum is nearby . In 2013, 34.02 million passengers used the station.

history

Piccadilly Line platform heading west
Overview sketch of the entire branch line

The station was opened on December 15, 1906 by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP & BR), the predecessor company of the Piccadilly Line, which put today's platforms 3 and 4 into operation. At the beginning the station was called Holborn (Kingsway) , the addition to brackets was dropped in the 1960s. The tracks of the Central London Railway (CLR), today's Central Line, ran through Holborn since 1900, but there was no connection between the two lines. The closest CLR station was the British Museum , some 250 meters to the west.

On November 30, 1907, the GNP & BR opened a branch line to Aldwych , with today's platforms 5 and 6. In 1913 there were plans for the first time to better link the CLR and GNP & BR, but these could not be implemented due to the First World War and were further delayed afterwards. Extensive modernization took place at the beginning of the 1930s. The original Leslie Green station building has been replaced by a new building designed by Charles Holden . The removal of the elevators as well as the construction of escalators and a new underground counter hall enabled better access. Finally, on September 25, 1933, trains of the Central Line stopped for the first time at the new platforms 1 and 2, after the British Museum station had been closed the day before.

Since its opening, relatively few passengers used the shuttle on the branch to Aldwych, because in parallel reversed the tram in Kingsway Tramway Subway , a Unterpflasterbahn route . The Aldwych branch could not even benefit from the cessation of tram operations in 1952. In the end, the trains ran there only during rush hour , on September 30, 1994 operations were completely stopped. Due to the terrorist attacks on July 7, 2005 , the Piccadilly Line station was closed for a few weeks; it reopened on August 4th.

Disused platforms

Head platform 6 had been used very sparsely since 1912 and was finally closed on August 16, 1917. During the Second World War, offices were set up in the area of ​​the entire platform and the track, and a dormitory above it. The platform was given the nickname hostel because guest workers were still housed there in the 1950s. Later, parts of the premises were used by a model railroad association and as a warehouse for the University of London ; today they are empty.

Platform 5 served as a test area for interactive advertising, which is projected by video beamers onto screens on the back wall behind the track. When a train arrives, the beamers are switched off and switched on again after departure. To test the detection system, the still existing train of the branch line was used. In addition, the platform was raised at a point where the door of a stopping train should stop in order to explore possibilities for barrier-free access. The platform is still in comparatively good condition and, apart from a storage area for escalator spare parts at the northern end, largely unchanged. It has already been used several times as a film set, for example the music video for the song Turn Back Time by the Danish band Aqua was shot here in 1997 .

Web links

Commons : Holborn (London Underground)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 2013 annual entries and exits. (Excel, 228 kB) Transport for London, 2014, accessed on July 28, 2014 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c Piccadilly Line. Clive's Underground Line Guides, accessed January 28, 2013 .
  3. ↑ a b Central Line. Clive's Underground Line Guides, accessed January 28, 2013 .
  4. ^ JE Connor: London's Disused Underground Stations . Capital Transport, London 1999, ISBN 1-85414-250-X , pp. 98 .
  5. ^ Hidden Holborn. Underground history, October 15, 2008, accessed January 28, 2013 .
Previous station Transport for London Next station
British Museum
(closed) 		Central line flag box.svg Chancery Lane
Covent Garden or
Aldwych (closed) 		Piccadilly line flag box.svg Russell Square

Coordinates: 51 ° 31 '3.4 "  N , 0 ° 7' 13.4"  W.