Sloane Square is a London Underground station in Sloane Square (Chelsea, district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea). It is served by the District and Circle lines, between South Kensington and Victoria stations and is in Travelcard Zone 1.
The entrance to the station is on the east side of Sloane Square (A3217). It is adjacent to the Royal Court Theatre and is the nearest station for Kings Road shopping, the Peter Jones department store and the Cadogan Hall.
The station was opened on 24 December 1868 by the District Railway (DR, now the District line) when the company opened the first section of its line between South Kensington and Westminster stations.
The construction of the station was complicated by the crossing of the site by the River Westbourne which ran through Hyde Park as the Serpentine Lake and was originally crossed by the Knight's Bridge at Knightsbridge. The River was carried above the platform in a large iron pipe suspended from girders. It remains in place today.
The DR connected to the Metropolitan Railway (MR, later the Metropolitan line) at South Kensington and, although the two companies were rivals, each company operated its trains over the others tracks in a joint service known as the "Inner Circle".
On 1 February 1872, the DR opened a northbound branch from its station at Earl's Court to connect to the West London Extension Joint Railway (WLEJR, now the West London Line) to which it connected at Addison Road (now Kensington (Olympia)). From that date the "Outer Circle" service began running over the DR's tracks. The service was run by the North London Railway (NLR) from its terminus at Broad Street (now demolished) in the City of London via the North London Line to Willesden Junction,[citation needed] then the West London Line to Addison Road. Due to financial problems, the DR extended only one station further east, which is Mansion House - the new eastern terminus of the DR.
From 1 August 1872, the "Middle Circle" service also began operations through Sloane Square running from Moorgate along the MR's tracks on the north side of the Inner Circle to Paddington then over the Hammersmith & City Railway (H&CR) track to Latimer Road then, via a now demolished link, to the West London Line to Addison Road and the DR to Mansion House. The service was operated jointly by the H&CR and the DR.
On 30 June 1900, the Middle Circle service was withdrawn between Earl's Court and Mansion House. On 31 December 1908 the Outer Circle service was also withdrawn.
In the late 1930s, the station building was rebuilt in the modern style and escalators were installed between the ticket hall and the platforms. The new station building did not last long as it was mostly destroyed during World War II. A German bomb that fell in November 1940 killed 37 and injured 79 passengers on a train in the station and destroyed the ticket hall, escalators and the glazed roof over the tracks.
In 1949, the Metropolitan line operated Inner Circle route was given its own identity on the tube map as the Circle line. By 1951 the station had been rebuilt again in a similar style to the 1930s building. The arched glass roof was not replaced and the current station does not have the light open atmosphere of the original. The office building above the station entrance is a later addition.
On 5 April 1960, Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies boys who were the inspiration for the boy characters of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and who resented the public association with the character named after him, committed suicide by throwing himself under a train as it was pulling into the station.
On 26 December 1973, a terrorist bomb exploded in the telephone kiosk in the booking office. No one was injured.
The station has ticket halls, 5 payphones (3 in the ticket halls, 2 on the platforms), two escalators (exit only), 7 gates, a Wifi service, 9 vending machines and two photo booths. It also has canopies over each platform.
London Bus routes 11, 19, 22, 137, 211, 319, 360, 452 and C1, and night routes N11, N19, N22 and N137 serve the station.
This is possibly the most inelegant object I’ve featured on the blog so far. Steady those trembling nerves – it’s a giant metal tube!
Inside, however, is one of a famously elusive and vaguely bewitching brood: London’s lost rivers.
Sloane Square station was opened, rather sweetly, on Christmas Eve 1868. Inaugural passengers, perhaps in search of a last-minute festive goose or clementine, would have had good cause to wonder as to the identity of the iron vessel hung in a decidedly non-festive fashion above their heads.
But this was no unexceptional strut or inert girder. Contained within was what remained of the River Westbourne, whose contents were en route from Hampstead Heath to the Thames.
Knowledge of this particular waterway no doubt was and still is kept to a minimum. How much of the river still runs through the pipe is possibly of an equally small magnitude. But there it goes, trickling – or maybe pouring – over the heads of travellers, a minor but rather fascinating engineering marvel.
You can get a better idea of the route of the river (if not a clearer view of the pipe) by peering through some of the railings between the buildings that surround the station:
I believe you used to be able to get a much clearer view from up here, before residents tired of a) the sight of trains b) the sight of people struggling to catch sight of trains c) the sight of anything except their own valuable homes. This is sad, because there are far more objectionable things in the Sloane Square neighbourhood than a grey conduit.
Such was the ingenuity of the Victorians, however, that a channel of water passing directly through the location of a proposed station became not a dilemma but an opportunity. And such was their fortitude that the opportunity survives to this day, inviting odd glances, sporadic frowns and the occasional knowing smile towards the taming of this 'Bourne supremacy'.