Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

The original Hillingdon London Underground station built for £996

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date12 September 2021
Publication titleMyLondon (England)
Sometimes you can glimpse them as blurry images from the windows of passing trains, sometimes they've been used for bizarre things like storing frozen meat or heating people's homes.

In other cases though, old stations and tunnels have been buried or completely lost so that they've all but been forgotten about.

Such is the case with the original, long forgotten Hillingdon London Underground station.

READ MORE: The crazy ghost whose desperate screams 'haunt' Liverpool Street station

Of course today we know the Hillingdon station as the busy hub located between Uxbridge and Ickenham. It is the penultimate station on the Uxbridge branch of both the Metropolitan and the Piccadilly lines.

But this wasn't always the case.

In fact the original station was much, much older.

You have to go back to 1923 to a time when Metroland was first expanding to trace its routes.

At that point, Halden Estates -which was building homes in the area -approached the Metropolitan Railway to ask for a station to be built to serve its new housing estates.

A station was duly planned and built at Long Lane in Ickenham as the suburbs in the area began to grow.

It was put up by the Rust and Ratcliffe firm from Chesham who estimated they could build it for just £996.

It was really just a tiny half-timbered ticket hall at first and an iron footbridge over the platforms was provided for an extra £200.

Wooden buildings on the platforms provided simple shelter.

The station's first use was in December 1923.

But passenger numbers grew as the area began to develop and an impressive 58,711 people used the station in its first year.

Clearly this small station was not going to be big enough to cope with demand.

Residents began to complain about the lack of facilities including toilets.

People also...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT