[48374] London : Covent Garden Station

London Underground - Covent Garden Station, Long Acre, London WC2, 1907.

Piccadilly Line.

By Leslie William Green (1875-1908).

Grade ll listed.

Detail - to the stairs.

 

A good example of a station designed by Leslie Green to serve the Great Northern Piccadilly & Brompton Railway, later the Piccadilly Line, retaining original tiled signage, although some has been replicated.

 

The Yerkes group of stations designed by Leslie Green illustrate a remarkable phase in the development of the capital's transport system, with the pioneering use of a strong and consistent corporate image; the characteristic ox-blood faience façades are instantly recognisable and count among the most iconic of London building types.

 

Leslie Green was appointed Architect to the Underground Electric Railways Co of London Ltd in 1903 and designed 40 stations for the company in a distinctive Edwardian Baroque house style clad in ox-blood faience. They followed a standardised design and plan adapted to the site. Interiors comprised a ground-floor ticket hall with lifts, a spiral stair down to lower corridors, and further stairs down to the platforms which were usually parallel. The upper storey housed lift machinery and office space. Ticket halls featured deep-green tiling with a stylised acanthus leaf or pomegranate frieze, and ticket windows in aedicular surrounds; few of these features now survive. Stairs, corridors and platforms were faced in glazed tiles with directional signage, produced by various tile manufacturers, each station with its unique colour scheme. Green suffered ill health and his contract with UERL terminated at the end of 1907. He died the following year at the age of 33.

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