Holborn Tube Station - History

History

The station was opened by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR, now the Piccadilly Line) on 15 December 1906 with the name Holborn (Kingsway). Kingsway was a new road, cutting south from High Holborn through an area of cleared slums to Strand. The suffix was dropped from tube maps in the 1960s.

The GNP&BR constructed its station where it crossed the Central London Railway (CLR, now the Central Line) tunnels running under High Holborn. The CLR had been operating since 1900, and its nearest station, British Museum, was 250 metres to the west.

Despite being built and operated by separate companies, it was common for the underground railways to plan routes and locate stations so that interchanges could be formed between services. This had been done by other lines connecting with the CLR stations at Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road, but an interchange station was not initially constructed between the GNP&BR and the CLR because the tunnel alignment to British Museum station would not have been suitable for the GNP&BR's route to its Strand station (later called Aldwych). The junction between High Holborn and the newly constructed Kingsway was also a more prominent location for a station than that chosen by the CLR. The Central Line platforms were not opened to form an interchange between the lines until 25 September 1933.

The opening of the GNP&BR branch from Holborn to Strand station was delayed until 30 November 1907 by the construction of the tramway subway.