This week Camden Guide, Lynette Denzey, continues exploring Camden’s Leslie Green stations.
CAMDEN’S GREEN STATIONS
Leslie William Green (Wikipedia)
In 1903 Leslie Green was appointed architect for the Underground Electric Railways Company (UER) and he was commissioned by UER to design 50 new stations – inside and out and they are an early example of a strong and consistent corporate image.
11 of the 17 London Borough of Camden’s tube stations were designed by Green and this week we are looking at Camden Town Station.
Camden Town Station
Another of Camden’s tube stations to have an early name change – just like Goodge Street. This is becoming a habit! When Camden Town station was being planned it was to have been called Camden Road, but when it opened in 1907 it was given its current name, Camden Town.
The station has two facades. The frontage to Kentish Town Road, seen above, is the most original with the familiar ox blood tiling and four semi-circular windows. The frontage has two of the original ornate lamp brackets and a blue vitreous enamel poster frame.
The frontage to Camden High Street, seen below, was similar, again with the ox blood tiling but originally with just three semi-circular windows. In 1929 the three lifts at the station were replaced by escalators necessitating changes to the ticket hall and entrance but the more devastating change was during the autumn of 1940 when most of the left-hand side of the Camden High Street façade was destroyed by bombing during the Blitz leaving just two semi-circular windows.
Due to the narrowness of the roads above the tracks, and the need to keep the lines immediately beneath them (far more economical to dig up roads rather than properties), the north bound line runs directly above the south bound line.
The tiles at Camden Town station are light blue and cream, as seen below, but most are not original having been replaced in 2001.
This is a confusing station to make interchanges (as can be seen in the photo below) as the Edgware and High Barnet lines from the north merge here then to the south they split into the Bank and Charing Cross branches. There is a lesser used passageway at the southern end of the station which connects to all the platforms and makes changing from one Northern Line branch to the other much easier as it is usually far less busy than the corridors at the bottom of the escalators.
As we have already seen at Goodge Street, this is one of eight tube stations that have deep level air raid shelters constructed during World War Two. It was opened for public use in June 1944 and closed two days before VE Day. Subsequently it was used for archive storage.
The tunnels also featured in The Sun Makers in 1977, the fourth serial of the 15th season of Dr Who with the fourth Dr Who Tom Baker.
From the 1970’s Stanley the tramp made his home in the alcove of Finlay’s tobacconist kiosk at the station. Stanley Kulikowski was Polish and arrived in England at the outset of WW2. He was a very familiar figure living in the alcove for many years until he required hospital treatment and was admitted to University College Hospital and never returned to his alcove. Does anyone know what happened to Stanley? Did he return to Poland as he hoped to do?
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