Joshua Abbott has launched a crowdfunding campaign to publish Modernism Beyond Metro-land, a book documenting 20th-century architecture in London’s suburbs. In the first of a series of extracts, the spotlight is on Wanstead Station. Photo by Geoff Wilkinson
Like the Piccadilly Line, the Central Line was extended east and west in the 1930s as London Transport sought to monopolise travel in the suburbs.
The chief executive of the company, Frank Pick, had brought in architect Charles Holden in the mid-1920s to oversee an overhaul of the network’s stations. He wanted Holden to design new, dynamic-looking station buildings and to harmonise the various visual elements within – signage, lighting, posters – to create what we would call today a brand image. Holden’s Piccadilly Line stations, such as Arnos Grove, Southgate and Sudbury Town, were received rapturously in the architectural and national press, and visited by both architects and transport networks from overseas looking to create something similar.
By the late 1930s, Holden had stepped away from designing Tube stations, becoming enmeshed in designing new buildings for the University of London in Bloomsbury. He returned to design three tube stations: Wanstead, Redbridge and Gants Hill, which would prove to be his last work for the Underground.
The stations were designed as a part of the 1935–40 New Works Programme to extend and rebuild some of the network’s stations. Unfortunately, World War II intervened, causing Holden to alter his original designs to accommodate a lack of materials and funds.
On paper, the stations were more daring than the finished products we see today. Holden’s office produced many different designs for Wanstead, finally going for a rectangular ticket hall with a ventilation tower. The ticket hall and tower were to have glass bricks to bring illumination to the interior, as well as a carving of St George and the Dragon by Joseph Armitage. The finished building doesn’t have the glass bricks or the carving but keeps the final plan.
The completed building – which finally opened on 14 December 1947 – was constructed of prefabricated concrete panels finished in grey render with black tiles around the station entrance. Its austere finish looks forward to post-war brutalism, much like the unfinished concrete of earlier Holden stations like Arnos Grove and Cockfosters. Inside, the ticket hall is spacious and plain, with glass bricks letting in light onto the escalators. This station, as well as Redbridge and Gants Hill, were used as air raid shelters during World War Two, with the tunnels in between used by Plessey Electronics for manufacturing munitions.
For more information on Modernism Beyond Metro-Land and to support the crowdfunder, visit wnstd.com/mbml