St John's Wood

St John's Wood is the 15th station I have visited on the Jubilee Line. It was opened in 1939 as a stop on the Bakerloo Line. It replaced two nearby stations on the Metropolitan Line,  Lord's and Marlborough Road. The station became part of the Jubilee Line when it opened in May 1979. Although the Jubilee Line officially opened in 1979, the foundation of the line was put in place in the 1930s with the construction of the Metropolitan Railway's branch line to Stanmore. In 1939, to try and improve capacity through Baker Street, the Stanmore branch was transferred to the Bakerloo line. The creation of the Jubilee Line in the 1970s did not involve the construction of wholly new stations but the tunnelling of a new route through Central London connecting Baker Street and Charing Cross via Bond Street and Green Park.

The signs at the station all omit the apostrophe in St John's Wood for some reason that I can't fathom. The platform was designed by Harold Stabler, an artist, in 1939 and remains unchanged.

St John's Wood is one of four stations on the Underground network to feature tiles designed by artist Harold Stabler. These decorative tiles are interspersed with plain tiles throughout the station. He designed 18 different tiles. 

 This tile has the Underground roundel, others represent the coats of arms of the Home counties or famous London buildings. Stabler also designed a number of posters for London Transport.

The eagle is a representation of Bedfordshire. 

The crown and three Saxon weapons represent Essex. 

The stag is an interpretation of the coat of arms of Hertfordshire while the five martlets represent Sussex.

The martlet is used in English heraldry as a mythical bird without feet which never roosts from the moment of its birth until its death. It represents continuous effort as it is continuously on the wing.

St John's Wood and Swiss Cottage stations are the only ones on the Underground to feature 'Thomas Lord' tiles due to the proximity to Lord's Cricket Ground.

The tiles were all cleaned and replaced  in 2006.

The station building was designed by Stanley Heaps and is Grade II listed and although it no longer has the wooden escalators, it has retained the uplighters between the escalators. The bronze uplights are one of only three surviving sets of escalator uplights.

The escalators bring you up to a circular ticket hall lit by a large curved window and pendant lighting..

The station exit takes you out onto Finchley Road via a very green courtyard.

In 1960 flats were built on top of the station but it is only the station building that has the Grade II listed status.

I turned left off the Finchley Road onto Acacia Road and spotted this high brick wall. I followed it round to the next road and discovered that this was the old St John's barracks.

Most of the land in the area around St John's wood was owned by the Eyre family who acquired it from around 1732. It consisted mainly of farm land. The barracks was built on the site of the old St John's Wood farm. In 1804, it was just used by the corps of Gunner Drivers and their horses. Then in 1823 the Cavalry Riding establishment moved in and a new riding school was built for them in 1825. By 1835 the original barrack block had been demolished and a new block built running parallel to Acacia Road. Although this was demolished in 1969 the back wall still remains and that is the large high wall I could see from the road. In 1880 the Royal Horse Artillery moved into the St John's Wood barracks.

After WW2 King George VI wanted to keep a troop of horse artillery mounted and dressed in traditional manner to be used for ceremonial duties. This became known as the King's Troop. In honour of her father the Queen retained the name after she ascended the throne in 1952. The troop always takes precedence over all other regiments during parades. The lease of the land from the Eyre estate ran out in 2012 and the the troop moved to the Woolwich barracks. The riding school is a listed building and during the redevelopment of the site as a new housing estate the riding school will become a leisure facility.

Around the corner from the old barracks is the disused station of Marlborough Road, the predecessor of St John's Wood station. It opened in 1868 and closed the day before the new station of St John's Wood station opened in 1939.  

For many years after its closure the building was used as a restaurant. Then in 2007 Transport for London took it over again to house an electric substation installed as part of the power upgrade programme to support the air conditioning on the Metropolitan live trains.. 

I was now back on Finchley Road. Housing in this area consists of many mansion blocks. Mansion flats began being built in London towards the end of the 19th century. They were initially advertised as flats for bachelors with services but then bigger blocks were built to cater for families who still wanted servants without the hassle of running a large home. This one is Eyre Court, named after the Eyre family who owned the land.

The mansion blocks are usually red brick buildings and would have been on the outskirts of London when they were first built. They catered for  middle class buyers who were getting used to travelling into the City of London via the new railway network. They became popular amongst the aristocracy as a 'must have' and Princess Diana was given a mansion flat for her 18th birthday. Not here, but in Earl's Court.

 Eyre Court has some fine art deco features.

A more recent mansion block

At the back of Finchley Road on Waverly Place is the American School in London. It was founded in 1951 as an independent, non-profit school for children from nursery to Grade 12. There are 1350 students that attend the school who represent 50 different nationalities. Whilst visiting London four U.S. Presidents have visited the school: Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

 

This is St John's Wood High Street. It has a village feel to it with its mix of small boutiques, cafes and other independent shops.

There seem to be some exclusive restaurants on the High Street with this one which is one of the Wolseley on Piccadilly's restaurants which just opened a couple of years ago.

There is also The Ivy.

Just off the High Street on Wellington Place is this cabman's shelter. There are just 13 of these little green huts left of the 61 that were built between 1875 and 1914. They were originally built to provide sustenance and shelter for the Hansom cabs which were horse drawn carriages in the late 19th century. Prior to the cabmen's shelters the only place a driver could go for food and shelter was to a pub where alcohol was high on the list of drinks purchased. The Earl of Shaftesbury was not happy about the amount of drinking that was happening and he started a fund for the building of shelters where the cabmen could purchase hot drinks and food. The existing shelters still sell food today.

I walked to the end of the road which comes out on Prince Albert Road. This is the Studio Nuffield Lodge which used to be part of Grove House. Sigismund Goetze, the painter and penultimate owner of Decimus Burton's Grove House converted the stables into a studio for himself. Despite the restrictions of the curved wall the studio house has two obvious features visible from this viewpoint, the large arched windows and a large pyramidal lantern rooflight. Goetze (1866-1939) was a distinguished artist and patron of the arts and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888.

Next to the studio behind the wall is Grove House, a Regency villa, built on the north side of Regent's Park.  In the centre of the roundabout in front of Grove House is a life sized statue of St George atop a first world war memorial.

The sculptor was Charles Hartwell (1873-1951). The statue dates from about 1907 and was donated by Goetze in 1936.

Prince Albert Road runs parallel to the Regent's Canal and I followed a short path down to the tow path. The nine miles of the Regent's canal was built to link the Grand Junction's Canal at Paddington with the River Thames at Limehouse. It was opened in two stages, from Paddington to Camden in 1816 and the rest in 1820. The canal goes through King's Cross, Camden Lock and Regent's Park which is the section I am now walking.

There are some very large houses on the Regent's park side of the canal.

I walked back along the canal in the other direction to have a look at the Macclesfield bridge. This three arched bridge became known as 'Blow Up Bridge' after a massive explosion on a barge in October 1874. Three people on board were killed and the bridge destroyed. The barge was carrying gunpowder and petrol. The bridge was rebuilt in 1876, using the original iron columns. 

I left the tow path and went back up to Prince Road. On the other side of the George and the Dragon roundabout is St John's Wood Church. Built in 1814 as a chapel of rest for the surrounding burial ground it didn't become a parish church until 1952. The burial ground at Paddington Street was full and with a rising population  a new one was needed. The local council bought six acres of land, known as Great Garden Field and Willow Tree Field from the Eyre family and the Duke of Portland on which was built St John's Wood Church and burial ground. The reason for building it here was that it would be some distance away from the residential part of the parish and for some years it stood in a field on its own. 

The graveyard was used from 1814 to 1855 when the St Marylebone cemetery opened. There are thought to be 50,000 graves here. A transcription was made in 1962 of all the gravestones that were still legible which is now held in the Westminster City Archives. The former burial ground was made into a public garden in 1886, owned and looked after by Westminster City Council. The garden has a wide variety of trees as well as as formal displays and a wildlife area.

St John's Wood's most famous building has to be Lord's Cricket Ground. It moved to its present location  on the corner of St John's Wood Road and Wellington Road in 1814 after its two previous sites proved unsuitable. The ground is named after its founder Thomas Lord. Whether you are a cricket fan or not I am sure you will have heard of Lord's, home to the MCC, Marylebone Cricket Club. It was the MCC that created a code of laws for the game which are still in use today. The club also played an important role in the origin of the Ashes tournament. England's first ever loss on home soil was here to the Australians in 1882. The loss was referred to as 'the death of English Cricket' in The Sporting Times. When England next toured Australia, the team burnt a pair of bails in response to the article and the ashes were put into a small urn. The original urn is kept in the museum at Lord's and is now too fragile to be presented to the winning team. In the middle of the stone bas relief outside the ground you can see the urn being held up by one of the players. This 1934 relief sculpture depicts thirteen sportsmen and women representing tennis, golf, swimming, rowing, football as well as cricket. The relief was inserted on this corner when the road was widened in 1934.

I have visited the ground on numerous occasions as I coached cricket for many years and brought the children here for a number of free coaching sessions using the wonderful facilities at the ground. As the teams usually won the local tournaments they were fortunate to be invited to play the finals of the London Boroughs competition here on the nursery ground as the main pitch was the 'hallowed turf' and certainly not to be used by schoolchildren. However, there was one occasion when I actually did step foot onto the main pitch. The final of the London Girl's Teams was scheduled to be played on the  Nursery ground but that was being used by the Pakistani team who were here to play a test match. Consequently we were allowed to play on a section of the main pitch which they roped off. 

 

Although you cannot see the green of the pitch from outside the ground, one thing you can see is the media centre which towers above one of the stands. Built in 1998, I'm still not sure whether I like it or not. When it first opened I felt it just didn't fit in with the rest of the historic ground but maybe I've just got used to it over the years.

I continued along St John's Wood Road and turned down Grove End Road. In the middle of the road junction is a large memorial to Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901). He was a leading exponent of the New Sculpture movement that developed in Britain from around 1850 onwards which emphasised naturalistic poses and spiritual subjects. Ford lived nearby and died from a heart problem aged just 49. This monument was erected in his honour and was sculpted by Ford's former studio assistant Andrea Carlo Lucchesi. The bronze figure in mourning is based on a statue by Ford: The Muse of Poetry.

 

Grove End Road leads me onto Abbey Road with its zebra crossing made famous by The Beatles on the front cover of their album Abbey Road.

     

The Abbey Road recording studio is close to the crossing.  In November last year it celebrated its 90th birthday. The blue posters have photos of some of the musicians and singers who have recorded here.

 

The building was originally a three storey, sixteen room town house built in 1830. It was purchased by the Gramophone Company in 1928 who went on to build the world's first purpose-built recording studio. 

As I had walked in a kind of circle it was only a short walk back to the station.

Waiting for the tube I couldn't resist looking for more of Harold Stabler's tile designs.

Map data ©2022

Terms of Us