Caledonian Road
Listing Details
Listing: II
Date Listed: 20-07-2011
Local Authority: Islington
Architect: Leslie Green
Caledonian Road Station, London Borough of Islington
Background
The listing description states: “1906. Leslie Green station for the Piccadilly underground line. Claret-coloured faience tiles to the street, brick to side and rear. Cream and brown tile inside with handsome lettering. Frontage with row of five large arches, incorporating shop fronts (one original) and station entrance. Strong dentilled cornice to parapet.”
As part of the thematic review carried out by English Heritage in 2010 Caledonian Road was one of the forty or so stations considered for statutory heritage designation and a full provisional listing description was compiled. This described the station thus:
History
Caledonian Road Station was originally part of the Great Northern Piccadilly & Brompton Railway (GNP&BR), one of three tube lines opened 1906-7 by the Underground Electric Railways Co of London Ltd (UERL). The City & South London Railway - the world's first deep tube line – had opened in 1890 from the City to Stockwell, and although a flurry of proposals for further routes ensued, further progress was hampered by lack of capital until the Central London Railway (later the Central Line) opened in 1900.
In 1902 the American transport entrepreneur, Charles Tyson Yerkes, acquired the Brompton & Piccadilly Railway and Great Northern & Strand Railway, which he merged as the GNP&BR, and two other struggling companies: the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway; all of these were incorporated into the UERL. Yerkes died in 1905 before the tube lines were completed.
The GNP&BR, or 'Piccadilly Railway' or 'Tube', opened on 15 December 1906, running from the Great Northern & City Line terminus at Finsbury Park to the District Railway station at Hammersmith, with 16 intermediate stations, increased to 19 in 1907, when a spur to Strand (Aldwych) was also added. In 1910 the three combined UERL tubes were formally merged as the London Electric Railway (LER) and the GNP&BR became the Piccadilly Line.
Leslie Green (1875-1908) was appointed Architect to the UERL in 1903 and designed 40 stations for the company in a distinctive Edwardian Baroque house style. Most were two storeys high, with lift machinery incorporated in the upper floor, and flat roofs to enable commercial development above. A small number of stations, such as Regents Park, had no surface building. Surface buildings were of steel-frame construction clad in brick and faced in ox-blood red faience produced by the Leeds Fireclay Co Ltd. The elevations varied in their detailed treatment, but typically comprised a series of large arcaded bays, frequently incorporating shop units, with Diocletian windows to the upper storey, surmounted by a modillion cornice. Interiors followed s standardised plan adapted for the particular site, comprising a ticket hall with lifts and a spiral stair down to corridors, and further stairs down to the platforms, which were usually parallel. The upper storey housed lift machinery. Ticket halls featured deep-green tiling with a stylised acanthus leaf or pomegranate frieze, and ticket windows in aedicular surrounds. Stairs, corridors and platforms were faced in glazed tiles with directional signage, produced by various tile manufacturers, each station with its unique colour scheme. Green suffered ill health and his contract with UERL terminated at the end of 1907. He died the following year at the age of 33.
Description
The building is two storeys high, of steel-frame construction clad in brick and ox-blood red faience. The elevation faces west onto Caledonian Road and consists of five arcaded bays with the entrance in the central bay and the former exit (now blocked) in the northernmost bay. Above the latter is the original EXIT sign in raised gilded letters; the sign above the entrance denoting the station name is a modern replica.
The remaining bays are and always were occupied by shops; that to south of the entrance has a complete original shop front with decorative moulded corners to the transom lights and panelled doors; the other shop front is modern.
The upper storey has altered timber Diocletian windows in keyed semi-circular arches with egg-and-dart decoration and cartouches between the springers of the arcade, and a modillion cornice.
This was one of two Green stations (the other being Earl's Court) where the lifts descended directly to platform level without an intermediate stair. The ticket hall was modernised in 1987 and has no original features apart from some sections of cornice.
.aspx)
The straight stair down to the spiral stair retains original green wall tiling with a pomegranate frieze and a timber handrail. The spiral stair also has original tiling in three contrasting tones of mauve, a bronze handrail and timber fire hydrant cabinet at the top.
The platforms retain extensive tiling in the same mauve colour scheme, tiled signage, including the station name in dark-brown lettering on white panels and several original aedicular WAY OUT AND NO EXIT panels (others have been replicated), and sections of directional signage on trackside walls.
.aspx)
.aspx)
Sources
Menear, L, London's Underground Stations [1983]
Croome, DF & Jackson, AA, Rails through the Clay (1993)
Lawrence, D, Underground Architecture (1994)
Croome, DF, The Piccadilly Line: an Illustrated History (1998)
Leboff, D, The Underground Stations of Leslie Green (2002)
Wolmar, C, The Subterranean Railway (2004)
Rose, D, Tiles of the Unexpected (2007)
Where next?
» Back to Islington
» Back to Leslie Green
» Back to Piccadilly
» Back to Underground Heritage
