Hendon Central

 

Hendon Central opened as a terminus for the Northern line in 1923 and then became a through station when the line was extended to Edgware ion 1924. It is a surface station and when built was surrounded by fields.

It has a central platform and only services the Northern line with one line south and the other north.

You can see from this map that I just have three more stations to visit on the Edgeware branch of this undergound line. This line has 52 stations and this will be the 38th I've visited on the Northern Line. My 217th on the Underground system.

 

The station was designed by Stanley Heaps and is similar is style to the previous station at Brent Cross. As I mentioned on my last post Heaps worked closely with Leslie Green and Charles Holden and was influenced by their station designs.  Above the florist shop inside the staion you can see the original sign for telephones.

The ticket hall is very spacious and light, very much a feature of Holden's stations

The station was built in the centre of the town as part of an architectural feature of a new town, known as Hendon Central Circus. It was an early roundabout built on the Watford Bypass. In the late 1960s it was converted to a crossroads.

The balcony above the station has the original advertising roundel for the underground.

Constant stream of traffic goes past the station, being one of the main routes from the north into London.

On another section of the Hendon Central Circus was a cinema. Built as the Ambassador Cinema in February 1932, it went on to change names several times.From the Gaumont in 1933 to the Classic (1968), Cannon (1985), MGM (1993) and finally the ABC in 1996. It closed as a cinema in 1997 and is currently a fitness centre.

I walked away from the busy road to Hendon Park. By the entrance is the cafe which was originally built as a bomb shelter with a lead lined roof and solid bricks. Apparently this is the first kosher park cafe in the UK supervised by the Sephardi Kashrut Authority.

 

Just inside the entrance to the park are these two screens which were originally designed for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. After her death in 2022 they have been redesigned as a celebration of her life.

The Holocaust memorial garden.

The rest of the park is mainly informal parkland.

I left the park and followed this pathway.

I noticed a number of new buildings going up in the area. 

The path continued until it emerged onto the main road facing this large  Irish pub. 



There is a strong Irish community in Hendon reflected in the name of the pub; The Cloddagh Ring. Opening under this name in the early 1990s, it has established itself as a major spot for Irish music as well as the nearest watering hole for the students at Middlesex University close by.



Turning left to an area known as The Burroughs with four public buildings. This is the Town Hall dating from 1900. The building has a symmetrical frontage with seven bays. On the roof is a timber lantern with a weather vane on top. Hendon was an urban district council in 1894 and became a municipal borough in 1932. The municipal borough was abolished in the reorganisation of local government in 1965 when it became part of the London Borough of Barnet. This building is where Barnet Council meets. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher made her first appearance and speech here as Prime Minister.

Next to the Town Hall is another listed building, Hendon Library. It was opened in 1929, costing £30,000. The funding for the library came partly from the Carnegie UK Trust which gave £7000. The architect was Thomas Millwood Wilson and is decribed as being Neo-Georgian in style. The latin motto above the entrance translates as 'not the least part of learning is to be acquainted with good books.'

Despite being given a Grade II status in 2002, Barnet Conservative Council in 2020 were determined to sell the building to Middlesex library next door and move the library facilities to a smaller temporary building elsewhere. With a change of the council to a labour one and a lot of opposition from local residents the library was saved but not before a refurbishment meant a loss of original features and selling of space to the University.

The third of the civic buildings is the Fire station. A fire brigade was first established in Hendon in 1855 as a voluntary fire brigade with a fire engine kept in St Mary's Church just up the road from here. The local council took over the fire brigade in 1899 and a fire station was built here in 1911. As firefighters lived at the station a range of accommodation was needed from dormitories for single men to flats for married men and their families. In 1941 the National Fire Service was formed and Hendon Fire Service became part of the London Fire Force. With the formation of the new Greater London Council in 1965, Hendon became part of London Fire Brigade. Hendon is one of LFBs oldest operating fire stations. It currently houses a pump fire engine and a pump ladder fire engine.

The fourth building on this road is Middlesex University. The Grove building opened in 2011 and by 2013 all the different sections of the university came together onto one campus, unusual for a London University.

I was pleased that I had found some buildings of interest here as now I am going further away from the centre of London into the suburbs, they tend to be mainly residential areas and retail parks.