Kennington Tube Station - History

History

The station was opened on 18 December 1890 as part of London's first deep-level tube, the City & South London Railway (C&SLR) (now the Bank branch of the Northern line). The name 'Kennington' was adopted instead of 'Kennington Park Road' although in fact it was in the civil parish of Newington and thence became part of Southwark rather than in the Kennington part of Lambeth. The layout was originally similar to the current arrangement at Borough, with one platform (the northbound) having level access to the lift, and the other (the southbound) being one floor below it.

Two extra platforms were added in 1926, when the connection via Waterloo to Embankment on the former Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (now the Charing Cross branch) was built. At that time the old northbound platform was reconstructed, so that the track runs down the other side of the tunnel (to allow cross-platform interchange), resulting in unusually large tunnel mouths; this also produced an apparently mysterious door in the wall opposite the platform - the original access to the platform is concealed behind the door.

Since the original access to the northbound platform had been level with the lifts, it would now have been necessary for passengers to ascend stairs, cross a bridge over the tracks, and then descend again. Therefore, to ease the burden on passengers, the lift landing was raised up, by one floor, to the bridge level; this is why there are now so many stairs to the southbound platform. The old entrances to this platform, which have a more decorative appearance than the current entrances, still survive; despite this, the existence of these abandoned areas is not generally known to the public.

Unlike the other original C&SLR stations at Stockwell, Oval and Elephant & Castle, which were all rebuilt during the 1920s modernisation, and despite the major works taking place underground, Kennington's surface building saw little in terms of a physical update at that time. It is therefore the only station of the C&SLR's original section still in a condition close to its original design.

In order to improve the ventilation facilities of the station, without harming the historic fabric of the surface station, additional staff access from the surface to the tunnels has recently been built a short distance to the north, on the opposite side of the main road (adjacent to the pub). The station has now reopened after its first extensive refurbishment in more than eighty years.