Urban Design

Stanmore

Listing Details

History

Stanmore station was built in 1932 to designs by the Metropolitan Railway's in-house architect C W Clark, at the northern end of the Metropolitan's four-mile branch line from Wembley Park via Kingsbury. A proposed extension to Elstree was never constructed, leaving Stanmore as the terminus. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway, along with the other Underground operators, was merged into the new umbrella body known as London Transport; when in 1939 new Bakerloo Line tunnels were dug to ease congestion between Baker Street and Finchley Park, the former Metropolitan route north to Stanmore became part of the Bakerloo.

























Archive photo: 1933.























Alterations took place in 1948, when the entrance canopy was extended in its present form, in 1959-63 when the platform canopy and under-buildings were extended to provide additional shelter and a ticket office to serve the growing numbers of commuters parking in the adjoining car park, and in 2008 when a second canopy was constructed to the west, the design of which pays no regard to the original.  In 1979 the Stanmore line was again transferred, this time to the newly-established Jubilee Line, whose central London section from Charing Cross via Green Park to Baker Street had recently been completed. Alterations for the Underground Ticketing System in 1987 were restricted to the platform areas, leaving the original ticket hall largely intact.
 
Charles Walter Clark (1885-1972) worked for the Metropolitan Railway between 1910 and 1933, designing around 25 new and rebuilt stations as part of the refurbishment programme that accompanied the railway's electrification.
He employed a Beaux-Arts Classical style for the company's central London properties, including the Baker Street head offices (1913) and stations such as Praed Street/ Paddington (1914) and Edgware Road (1928).

For out-of-town stations he developed a brick-built domestic revival manner, intended to evoke the local rural vernacular and set the tone for ensuing suburban development: as well as the present station and its neighbour and contemporary Kingsbury, this is seen at Croxley and Watford (both 1925) - the latter being externally almost identical to Stanmore.

























Archive View, 1938.

The above archive photograph shows the judging of the Station Gardens Competition in 1938 when Stanmore won first prize. The photo below (part of Dr Neil Clifton’s collection on Flickr) shows the station in 1977, still within its arcadian setting of now mature trees and shrubs. In the platform stands a train of CO/P stock, on a special railway tour, shortly before the last of this 1930s stock was withdrawn from service on the Underground.

























 

Description
 

The front elevation to Stanmore Road has a central double doorway with glazed doors and sidelights; the overlight is formed of a series of diamonds (the Metropolitan logo). On either side are bronze framed poster panels with swan-neck light fittings above. To the left is a large rectangular window with multi-pane glazing in a hardwood frame, originally belonging to the station-master's office. Shops in the outer wings have hardwood-framed plate-glass windows and doors. Two doorways with two-panel doors and glazed overlights give access to the first-floor flats; two further doors in the screen walls to left and right of the main building open onto steps leading down to the basement flats. A glazed canopy on metal posts, rebuilt in 1948, spans the full width of the façade. The roof above has sprocketed eaves, and presents a symmetrical arrangement of three hipped dormers and four tall plain stacks.



The main station building stands on an embankment overlooking the railway cutting, and is set back from Stanmore Road behind a small forecourt with a planted area surrounded by a post-and chain fence. It is a rectangular block of one and a half storeys above a basement, with booking hall, ticket office and shops on the ground floor and domestic accommodation in the basement and attic. It is built in an Arts and Crafts-influenced vernacular style of variegated brown brick, with a vitrified brick base containing tiled ventilation panels and a dominant hipped roof of clay tile.

The booking hall is a double-height space with mustard-tiled walls (the tiles are replacements) and a moulded cornice. To the left are three original ticket windows with hardwood shutters, pilasters and architrave. To the right, a kiosk and a recessed bank of telephones have similar architraves. A single flight of steps with hardwood handrails, set in a glass-roofed brick enclosure lined with timber poster panels, leads down to the single island platform.
 
























Archive View, 1933 looking up to the station building standing like a country house set amid fields and trees

Here, beyond the modern ticket offices and UTS barriers, is the original accommodation block, a simple brick box which displays large poster panels and contains a waiting room and toilets, both modernised. A second block, added after 1959 stands beyond this. A simple girder canopy with a glazed roof, partly original and partly post-war, runs about half the length of the platform.


 

Sources

David Lawrence, Underground Architecture (1994).
London Underground Limited, Design Audit and List of Railway Heritage Features.
Mike Horne, The Metropolitan Line (2003).
London Transport Museum, Stanmore Station History (2002).
Amy V Davidson, CW Clark: a Case for Conservation? (unpublished MSc thesis, Oxford Brookes University 2008).

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