100th anniversary of the Charing Cross (Embankment) tube station

One hundred years ago a new tube station opened, a terminus to a tube line that was to last just 12 years before it was downgraded to a mere passing platform.

On the 6th April 1914, the new northbound platform opened on what was then called the  Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway line at what was then called  Charing Cross (Embankment) station.

Today we know them as the Northern line at Embankment station.

It had taken the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR), also known as the Hampstead tube, a number of years to get permission to open the station, as their line used to stop at Charing Cross, but needed extending one stop further to Embankment to link up with the sub-surface lines.

As I have recounted elsewhere, the railway company secured permission to build a loop tunnel running from Charing Cross, under the Thames and back up to Embankment, where a single northbound platform was built, and then it carried on northwards back to Charing Cross.

However the new platform was not the remain in its current state for long, as the railway company swiftly secured permission to extend the Northern line down to Kennington, where again it ended in a loop, and still does to this day.

That opened in 1926, and the old loop at Embankment was closed off.

That old loop is still there though, blocked off, and fortuitously so, as it was hit by a German bomb in 1940, and flooded. Only the good chance that it had been sealed off stopped that 1914 tunnel flooding the rest of the Northern Line.

That 100 year old platform is also still in use, and is still functioning as the northbound platform of the Northern line at Embankment station.

Well, it would be if the platform wasn’t closed right now for escalator replacement works.

However, if you pass through the northbound platform at the moment, do keep a close eye out, for some of the modern metal panels have been removed, revealing the old tiles underneath from the original design, and some less original, but still fairly old advertising posters.