Finchley Road Tube Station - History

History

The station was opened on 30 June 1879 by the Metropolitan Railway (MR, now the Metropolitan Line) on its extension from its now closed station at St. John's Wood (a different station from the current St. John's Wood Jubilee Line station). The station was rebuilt in 1914 with entrances incorporated into a new parade of shops.

By the mid 1930s the Metropolitan Line was suffering from congestion on its main routes from north London caused by the limited capacity of its tracks between Finchley Road and Baker Street stations. To alleviate this congestion new sections of deep tube tunnels were bored between Finchley Road and Baker Street to carry some of the traffic from the Stanmore branch and stations south of Wembley Park. These new tunnels opened on 20 November 1939 and from that date Finchley Road station was also served by Bakerloo Line trains running from Baker Street using the new tunnels. The Bakerloo Line services were subsequently transferred to the Jubilee Line when that line commenced operation on 1 May 1979.

Finchley Road was also the name of a nearby Midland Railway station which closed in 1927. The remains of these platforms are visible from Thameslink trains running on the Midland Main Line.

Analysis of earth removed when tunnelling towards the station revealed that its site was on the edge of the glacier which covered Britain to the north throughout the last Ice Age, as illustrated in episode 3 (Ice Age) of the BBC series British Isles: A Natural History