Whitechapel Station
Contributed by Survey of London on Nov. 28, 2017
Substantially rebuilt in 2013–18 for Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line),
Whitechapel Station has an intricate and accretive history, several indicators
of which have recently been erased.
East London Railway
The origins of the station lie with the East London Railway Company, formed in
1865 to see through a scheme initiated by William Hawes, to connect north and
south London by adapting the Thames Tunnel and linking to other lines at
Liverpool Street and New Cross. Sir John Hawkshaw was the project’s engineer.
The southern section was built first, the northern stretch did not open until
April 1876. Thomas Andrew Walker was the contractor for the line. Premises at
what is now 277 Whitechapel Road were acquired in December 1873 for a
‘principal station’. The site of No. 275 was added, but when the station was
built in 1874–5 that proved surplus to requirements. The three-storey four-bay
Italianate building at No. 277 has twin elliptically arched public entrances;
the band below the first-floor windows and the parapet was lettered. An
illuminated canopy was built across the front in 1930. That was replaced by
twin leaf-like steel-and-glass projections around 2000, those also now
removed.
Under lettable offices, the entrance lobby and a short flight of stairs led to
an inner booking hall, on a more north-westerly axis in line with the tracks
and with a glass roof on iron openwork trusses. There was a booking office to
the west and a waiting room to the east. Through an arched opening in the end
wall, dog-legged staircases led down to the platforms. The brick back
elevation of the booking hall had an odd grandeur, with a triple arch below a
tall semi-circular parapet perforated by five oculi, perhaps to mitigate the
effect of smoke and soot on the top-lit booking hall while also admitting some
light. All but the front block was demolished in 2016.
Metropolitan District Railway
The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railway companies had considered
building a line east of Aldgate prior to the formation of the East London Line
in connection with the bedevilled plan to complete the ‘Inner Circle’. The
idea was revived in 1873–4 by George G. Newman of the legal firm of Newman,
Dale and Stretton, with a plan for a spur to link to the East London Railway
at Whitechapel. Through the Inner Circle Completion Company this gained
support from the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Metropolitan and District
companies took the scheme over in 1877, the former’s Chairman, Sir Edward
Watkin, only interested on account of the Whitechapel link, and brought in
Hawkshaw to devise a route. Watkin became Chairman of the East London Railway
Company and the relevant Act was granted in 1879. The line opened as far as St
Mary’s Station on the south side of Whitechapel Road in March 1884 and on to
Whitechapel in October 1884. Hawkshaw was the senior engineer working in
collaboration with his pupil John Wolfe-Barry, to whom close engagement
appears to have devolved, with Robert Davison as resident engineer. The
contractors for the works of 1883–4 were Lucas & Aird. Train operations
were subject to a complex joint working agreement between six different
railway companies.
The site that is now 275 Whitechapel Road, sold by the East London Railway
Company in 1876 and set to be used for the Working Lads’ Institute in 1882,
had been reacquired, along with land to the rear of Nos 269–271 for a second
Whitechapel Station. That was built in 1884 by Lucas & Aird, working with
Holliday & Greenwood, probably just for the front block, to designs by
Wolfe-Barry.
This station was a simple single-storey booking hall with a front of twin
arches and a cornice (originally flanked by lettering, METROPOLITAN DISTRICT
RAILWAY above, WHITECHAPEL TERMINUS below), the eastern arch for entrance and
circulation directly to the platform, the western for egress via stairs from a
basement-level passage. Internally, there are arched timber roof trusses, as
there were in the now demolished booking hall and passage beyond. The space
above the building was soon made use of for advertising. A single-storey and
basement hipped-roof block behind Nos 269–271, still extant, originally housed
offices for a booking clerk and parcels, a ladies’ waiting room and lavatories
above a porter’s room, an inspector’s office and stores. To start with there
was just one platform, that now to the north, under an iron and glass canopy,
with lay-byes or sidings (as this was a terminus) along the south side of what
is now Durward Street to the north-west, and where the southern platform was
to follow to the south-east. Thomas (Fulbourne) Street, Court Street and Woods
Buildings had all to be sustained by bridges. The Court Street footbridge is
supported by octagon-section built-up steel stanchions and girders of the
1880s, similar though smaller in scale to steelwork at Mansion House Station.
Whitechapel & Bow Railway
Extension of the District Line eastwards to Bow for a link to suburbs beyond
was a joint enterprise by the Metropolitan District and London, Tilbury and
Southend railway companies. The Whitechapel & Bow Railway Act of 1897 led
to works that began in 1899. The line opened in 1902. Cuthbert Arthur
Brereton, a partner of Wolfe-Barry, was the engineer and the contractor was
John Price. There was substantial demolition, underpinning and reconstruction
behind and at 279–317 Whitechapel Road and the station was reconfigured for
the new line to run over the low-level East London Railway Company’s tracks of
the 1870s. That meant removal of most of that line’s platform canopies to
throw plate-girder bridges across. A covered footbridge over the District Line
immediately west of the East London Line with stairs down westwards gave
access from Whitechapel Road to the Metropolitan and District Line platforms
until 2016 when it was removed. The Fulbourne Street and Woods Buildings
bridges and the superstructure of the Court Street bridge were replaced in
1899–1902 in plate-girder form with arched-plate flooring. The Woods Buildings
footbridge was removed in 2013–15.
From 1902 circulation to and from Whitechapel Road was combined by knocking
through from the District Line’s passage to the booking hall of the 1870s at
No. 277. The station entrance at No. 275 was given up, and that single-storey
front building was adapted for use as a shallow shop with the Whitechapel
Working Men’s Temperance Club’s billiard room behind. In 1923 there was a new
shopfront for Appleby & Matty’s gown shop. Other shop uses followed, a
mezzanine was inserted, and at the time of writing the whole unit is a coffee
shop.
Later changes
To the far north-east, south of Durward Street and behind 12–14 Vallance Road,
a four-bay electricity sub-station was built in 1904–5 for electrification of
the District Line. From 1933 and after mergers all running was taken over by
the London Passenger Transport Board. Decoratively tile-lined pedestrian
interchange subways were formed in 1935–6 to improve internal circulation
between the East London and District lines, Balfour Beatty and Co. Ltd being
the contractors for the Board’s engineers. In 1951 a relay room and staff
facilities were added to the east of the substation by Whyatt (Builders)
Ltd.
Air-raid damage to the District Line in 1941 included the loss of sections of
the platform canopies east of Court Street. From 1939 there had been plans to
build a ‘booking-on centre’ at Whitechapel Station, to provide facilities
(mess room, locker room, etc) for staff on the eastern parts of the District
Line. Eventually, in 1968, this scheme was seen through where the bomb damage
had occurred, to plans by the London Transport Architect’s Department. A large
single-storey block of eight-by-four bays on a precast concrete deck was
placed above the platforms. Latterly known as the Group Station Managers’
Building, this was reroofed in 2014.
The northernmost bridge carrying the District Line over the East London Line
was replaced in 1983 with the removal of adjacent platform canopies.
Elliptically arched brick bridges of the 1870s that carried Winthrop Street
and Durward Street were replaced in 2015–16. Despite this and other
alterations, the East London Line’s robust brick retaining walls of 1875,
built with deep recesses between buttresses, segmentally arched at their
heads, as inverts and in section, survive and are due to be made newly
prominent in 2018. North of Durward Street, the East London Line cutting
remains open.
The reconfiguration of Whitechapel Station for Crossrail in 2013–18 has been
carried out by BBMV JV (a joint venture of Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall and
Vinci Construction) as contractors, with BDP, architects, and Arcadis,
engineers. The front block of 277 Whitechapel Road has been retained. For
rebuilding of the ticket hall behind, from 2016 to 2018 public access has been
via a temporary station on the west side of Court Street; this replaced a
small 1950s building. The capacious new station concourse, principally entered
from 277 Whitechapel Road, will be an openwork steel-framed structure
supported by struts on the brick walls of the 1870s cutting with which it will
be aligned, slung low to allow light down to the East London Line platforms
before rising in the form of a ‘floating’ bridge across the District Line.
There will be a secondary entrance to the north, from a new public square. The
long concourse is to have a sedum-planted roof. For the Crossrail tunnels, 30m
below ground level, shafts were sunk either side of the East London Line off
Durward Street, and on the west side of Cambridge Heath Road. The line is due
to open in December 2018.
Whitechapel Station
Contributed by David Charnick on July 31, 2016
Whitechapel station is actually two stations, one above the other. The
original, nowadays the Overground platforms, opened in 1876 when the East
London Railway extended its reach from Wapping to Shoreditch. The line between
New Cross Gate (as it is now) and Shoreditch was created to provide a cross-
river service by using the Thames Tunnel, created by Marc Isambard Brunel and
Thomas Cochrane. While an impressive piece of engineering, the world’s first
tunnel beneath a navigable river, it had proved a commercial failure since its
opening in 1843.
The second station, whose frontage is visible on Whitechapel Road, is the
station created in 1884 when the District Railway took a great leap eastwards
from its Mansion House terminus in the City. The resultant Whitechapel and
Mile End Station thus became its new eastern terminus. It remained a terminus
until in 1902 when the Whitechapel and Bow Railway was created, linking the
District Railway with the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway at Bromley-by-
Bow Station.
The East London Railway was serviced from 1909 by the Metropolitan Railway via
a loop of track called St Mary’s curve (after the now disused St Mary’s
Station). However the East London Line became a service in its own right in
1913 when the line was electrified. The Metropolitan then ceased to come as
far east as Whitechapel until 1936, when it offered a through service to
Barking as the Hammersmith and City service.
While Whitechapel has undergone many changes, particularly the present
transformation for Crossrail, its structure and its services are reminders of
how this busy station has served a growing metropolitan area and connected it
to London at large.
