The Hampstead Tube - Antony Badsey-Ellis

Today’s Northern Line began life as two separate railways, the City & South London Railway between the City and Stockwell and the Hampstead Tube between Charing Cross and Golders Green or Highgate. The latter railway, opened in 1907, is the subject of this book. It was the first tube railway to venture into an undeveloped part of London, and quickly fulfilled its developer’s dream when new suburbs sprang up at Golders Green and the neighbouring Hampstead Garden Suburb. It was one of three tube railways – the others being the Piccadilly and the Bakerloo – owned by the London Electric Railway, whose distinctive deep red terracotta stations made their mark on Edwardian London and survive today at many locations. The Hampstead Tube linked with the City & South London at Kennington in 1926, by which time its Hampstead branch had been extended to Edgware. Extension of the Highgate branch to Barnet followed in 1940 and today’s Northern Line was complete.