Finchley Road

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Finchley Road tube station is a London Underground station at the corner of Finchley Road and Canfield Gardens in the London Borough of Camden, London NW3.

It is on the Jubilee Line, between West Hampstead and Swiss Cottage and on the Metropolitan Line between Baker Street and Wembley Park. It is in Travelcard Zone 2. Ticket barriers are in operation.

The station is adjacent to the O2 Shopping Centre. Despite its name the station is not in Finchley which is several miles to the north. It serves the Frognal and South Hampstead areas.

Across the road from the station is a notable and very large Waitrose store which opened in 1981, replacing the former John Barnes department store.

History

The station was opened on 30 June 1879 by the Metropolitan Railway (MR, now the Metropolitan Line) on its extension from its now closed station at St. John’s Wood (a different station to the current St. John’s Wood Jubilee Line station). The station was rebuilt in 1914 with entrances incorporated into a new parade of shops.

By the mid 1930s the Metroplitan Line was suffering from congestion on its main routes from north London caused by the limited capacity of its tracks between Finchley Road and Baker Street stations. To alleviate this congestion new sections of deep tube tunnels were bored between Finchley Road and Baker Street to carry some of the traffic from the Stanmore branch and stations south of Wembley Park.

These new tunnels opened on 20 November 1939 and from that date Finchley Road station was also served by Bakerloo Line trains running from Baker Street using the new tunnels. The Bakerloo Line services were subsequently transferred to the Jubilee Line when that line commenced operation on 1 May 1979.

Finchley Road was also the name of a nearby Midland Railway station which closed in 1927. The remains of these platforms are visible from Thameslink trains running on the Midland Main Line.