Euston station opened in May 1907 as part of the City and South London Railway's extension from Angel station. A few months later, the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened its own Euston station with a surface structure designed by architect Leslie Green. Despite having separate entrances the two stations shared an underground ticket hall.
From 1922-24 the station was closed to allow tunnels to be enlarged in preparation for both branches to join at Camden.
This is the front of London Euston National Rail station. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast main Line and was the first of London's mainline stations and the first to connect London with another city. Euston was opened in 1837 and the first inter city journey from London to Birmingham was made by the directors of the company in 1838.From here you can travel to destinations like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. I have been here on numerous occasions when travelling to and from Manchester. The current building was opened in 1968 and about all you can say about it is that it is functional.
I arrived at the station as all the alarms were going off and announcements for everyone to evacuate the station. It turned out that they were testing the alarm systems.
It's always incredibly busy.
On the plaza outside the station is a statue to Captain Matthew Flinders. The inscription reads:
In commemoration of Captain Matthew Flinders RN, 1774-1814, who named Australia and charted its 'unknown coast' with the help of Bungaree and the crew of HM S Investigator.
Two copies were made of this statue, one of which is in Port Lincoln, South Australia.
Outside the station is the London and North Western War memorial. It is a First World War memorial dedicated to all those LNWR employees who were killed in WW1
When Euston was first built a large Doric Arch was constructed to form a grand entrance to the station. All that remains are two accompanying lodges, one on either side of the approach road now.
On the exterior corner walls are quoin stones with the names of stations engraved in them. Inside this one is the Euston Tap pub.
Across the Euston Road is Friends House, built in 1927, it houses the central offices for the Quakers in Britain.
South of Euston Road is the University College London which is housed in a number of different impressive buildings.
But also in this area are a number of garden squares. Squares are one of the defining features of London making it very different from other cities. Mainly developed during the Georgian and Victorian periods they are a mixture of private and council enclosed gardens surrounded by houses. The locked private ones with their dense hedging are full of mystery whereas the public ones not only have a mixture of flowers and greenery but also recreational facilities such as playgrounds and tennis courts. The London Squares Act of 1931 was hugely important in protecting more than 400 of the city's squares from being built over. This one is Gordon Square. The gardens were designed and laid out by the 6th Duke of Bedford. They are now owned and maintained by the University of London.
The houses at Gordon Square were built between 1820 and 1850 and became the focus of the Bloomsbury Group. The group was made up of British writers, intellectuals. philosophers and artists in the early 20th cent. Among the people involved were Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and E. M. Forster. The social life of the group revolved around the London and country houses of the various members and friends. The lifestyle of some of the set seemed outrageous to outsiders, mainly because of their many love affairs with partners seeming to move from one person to another. The group continued until the 1940s. After the Second World War many of the houses were no longer residential but housed various parts of the University.
Gordon Square was named after the 6th Duke of Bedford's wife, Lady Georgiana Gordon. This square is named after the Duke's family seat, Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. The houses in the square were narrower and less imposing than the houses on Gordon Square and hence had lower rents. Woburn Square. The southern half of the long, narrow shape of Woburn Square garden was lost when new buildings for the School of Oriental and African Studies and Institute of Education were constructed in the early 1970s..
