Swiss Cottage tube station (1868-1940)

This article is about the disused Metropolitan line station. For the current Jubilee line station, see Swiss Cottage tube station.
Swiss Cottage
Location Swiss Cottage
Owner Metropolitan Railway
Number of platforms 2
Key dates
13 April 1868 (1868-04-13) Opened
18 August 1940 (1940-08-18)[1] Closed
Replaced by Swiss Cottage
Other information
Lists of stations
London Transport portal

Swiss Cottage is a disused London Underground station in Swiss Cottage, northwest London. It was opened in 1868 as the northern terminus of the Metropolitan and St. John's Wood Railway, the first northward branch extension from Baker Street of the Metropolitan Railway (now the Metropolitan line). From here, starting in 1879, the line was subsequently extended further to Watford, Amersham, Chesham and Uxbridge.

Subsequent to the opening of a new Swiss Cottage station next-door, which was served initially by the Bakerloo line and is now on the Jubilee line, this Metropolitan line Swiss Cottage station was closed in 1940.

History

The Metropolitan Railway opened Swiss Cottage on 13 April 1868 as the northern terminus of a new branch line, the Metropolitan and St. John's Wood Railway.[2]

On 26 April 1868, two trains collided head-on at the station. This was the result of a signaller's error which caused an arriving train to be misrouted to the platform where a second train was stood awaiting departure. Three people were injured.[3]

In the 1920s the Metropolitan Railway demolished the street-level station building on the west side of Finchley Road and replaced it with a shopping arcade and three entrances down to the station. The structure was built to the designs of C. W. Clark.[4]

By the mid-1930s the Metropolitan line was suffering congestion at the south end of its main route where trains from its many branches were struggling to share the limited capacity of its tracks between Finchley Road and Baker Street. To ease this congestion, a new section of deep-level tunnel was constructed between Finchley Road station and the Bakerloo line tunnels at Baker Street. The Metropolitan line's Stanmore branch services were then transferred to the Bakerloo line effective from 20 November 1939 and diverted to run into Baker Street in the new tunnels, thus reducing the number of trains using the Metropolitan line's tracks.

With the new deep tunnel route, a new Bakerloo line station named Swiss Cottage was opened adjacent to this existing Metropolitan line station and, for a time, they operated as a single station (platforms 1 and 2 were for the Metropolitan line, and platforms 3 and 4 were for the Bakerloo line). This arrangement was short-lived, however, and the Metropolitan line Swiss Cottage station was closed after the last train on 17 August 1940 as a wartime economy. With the opening of the Jubilee line in 1979, the Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo line, including the new Swiss Cottage station, was transferred again, to the new Jubilee line.

The station building was demolished in the 1960s to allow the widening of Finchley Road, but the former platform area is still in partial existence.

Unbuilt line to Hampstead

The original intention of the Metropolitan & St. John's Wood Railway was to run to underground north-east to Hampstead Village, and indeed this appeared on some maps.[5] Although in the event this was not completed in full and the line was built in a north-western direction instead, a short heading of tunnel was built north of Swiss Cottage station.[6] This is still visible today when traveling on a southbound Metropolitan line service.

See also

Other Metropolitan line stations closed with the opening of the deep tunnel section:

References

  1. ↑ Forgotten Stations of Greater London by J.E.Connor and B.Halford
  2. ↑ "Swiss Cottage". London's Abandoned Tube Stations. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20.
  3. ↑ http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=2914
  4. ↑ Historic England. "Monument No. 1379008". PastScape. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  5. ↑ Leboff, David; Demuth, Tim (1999). No Need To Ask. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport. p. 9. ISBN 185414 215 1.
  6. ↑ Jackson, Alan (1986). London's Metropolitan Railway. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. p. 374. ISBN 0-7153-8839-8.
Preceding station   London Underground   Following station
Metropolitan line
towards Baker Street or Aldgate

Coordinates: 51°32′37″N 0°10′36″W / 51.54361°N 0.17667°W / 51.54361; -0.17667

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