Oxford Circus tube station

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Oxford Circus
Baker Street & Waterloo Railway station building opened in 1906.
Location
Place Oxford Circus
Local authority Westminster
Operations
Managed by London Underground
Platforms in use 6
Transport for London
Zone 1
2005 annual usage 63.056 million †
2007 annual usage 72.046 million †
History
1900
1906
1969		 Central Line opened
Bakerloo Line opened
Victoria Line opened
Transport for London
List of London stations: Underground | National Rail
† Data from Transport for London [1]

Oxford Circus is a London Underground station serving Oxford Circus at the junction of Regent Street and Oxford Street, with entrances on all four corners of the intersection. The station is an interchange between the Central, Victoria and Bakerloo Lines. It is the third busiest station on the network and the busiest without connection to the National Rail service.

On the Central Line it is between Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road, on the Bakerloo line it is between Regent's Park and Piccadilly Circus, and on the Victoria line it is between Green Park and Warren Street. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Contents

[edit] History

The station opened on the Central London Railway on 30 July 1900, with the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway's platforms opening on 10 March 1906. The two companies had separate surface buildings and lift shafts. The station buildings, which remain today as exits from the station, were constructed on very confined plots each side of Argyll Street on the south side of Oxford Street just to the east of the circus itself. The stations were originally constructed as entirely separate, but connecting passages were swiftly provided at platform level. The surviving Central London Railway building to the east of Argyll Street is the best surviving example of the stations designed by Harry Bell Measures and the Bakerloo line building to the west, is a classic Leslie Green structure.

Almost from the outset, overcrowding has been a constant problem at the station and it has seen numerous improvements to its facilities and below ground arrangements to deal with this difficulty. After much discussions between the then two separate operators, a major reconstruction began in 1912. This saw a new ticket hall, dealing with both lines, built in the basement of the Bakerloo station, the Bakerloo lifts removed and new deep level escalators were opened down to the Bakerloo line level. Access to the Central line was by way of existing deep level subways. The new works came into use on 9 May 1914 with the CLR lifts still available for passengers. By 1923 even this rearrangement was unable to cope so a second rebuilding commenced. This saw a second set of escalators, directly down to the Central line, built, and the CLR station building becoming an exit only. Then, on 2 October 1928, a third escalator leading to the Bakerloo platforms was opened. Unusually lifts came back into prominence at an Underground station when, in 1942, a set of high speed lifts came into use, largely used as an exit route from the Central line platforms directly to the Argyll Street exit building.

Central London Railway station building opened in 1900.
Central London Railway station building opened in 1900.

The Victoria Line opened on 7 March 1969. To handle the additional passenger loads a new ticket hall was constructed directly under the road junction. In order to excavate the new ticket hall below the roadway, traffic was diverted for five years (August 1963 to Easter 1968) on to a temporary bridge-like structure known as the "umbrella" covering the Regent Street/Oxford Street intersection. Services tunnels were constructed to carry water mains and telecom cables past the new ticket hall. Construction of the Victoria Line station tunnels with their platforms, the new escalator shafts and the linking passages to the Central Line platforms was carried out from access shafts sunk from nearby Cavendish Square, Upper Regent Street and Argyll Street. Cross-platform interchange between the Bakerloo and Victoria lines was provided by constructing the Victoria line platforms parallel to the Bakerloo line ones. With the additional escalators in place, a new one-way circulation scheme was introduced and the remaining lifts were removed.

During renovation works, the station suffered a severe fire in 1984 which burned out one of the platforms. It was believed that the fire was caused by a smoking materials being pushed through a ventilation grille into a storeroom where they set several materials on fire. The incident lead to a Smoking ban being introduced on trains.

[edit] The station today

The station is currently, in 2007, undergoing a major modernisation that will see the replacement of most of the existing finishes. The work will, however, see a restoration of the original Hans Unger designed motifs [2] on the Victoria line platforms.

[edit] Nearby Places of interest

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Preceding station   London Underground   Following station
Bakerloo line
towards Brixton
 Victoria line
Central line
towards Epping, Hainault
or Woodford via Hainault