Liverpool Street

Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a major railway station and connected London Underground station in the north eastern corner of the City of London in England. It is the southern terminus of the Great Eastern Main Line (GEML), and is the main departure point from London to destinations in the East of England not served by the East Coast Main Line from King’s Cross, as well as serving commuter services to parts of East London and Essex, such as Clacton-on-Sea, Chelmsford, Witham and Harwich. It serves the London Stansted Airport via the Stansted Express.

It is one of the busiest stations in the United Kingdom, the third busiest in London after Waterloo and Victoria with 123 million visitors each year, and one of 17 managed by Network Rail. The station has exits to Bishopsgate, Liverpool Street and the Broadgate development. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Liverpool Street serves destinations in the East of England including Stansted Airport, Cambridge, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Ipswich, Clacton-on-Sea, Chelmsford, Colchester, Braintree, Southend-on-Sea and the port of Harwich, as well as many suburban stations in north-eastern London, Essex and Hertfordshire. It is one of the busiest commuter stations in London. A daily express train to Harwich connects with the ferry from Harwich to Hoek van Holland, forming the Dutchflyer service.

Trains from Liverpool Street do not go to Liverpool. For that city, Euston is the London terminus.

Almost all passenger services from Liverpool Street are operated by National Express East Anglia. It operates local and suburban services on the Great Eastern and West Anglia lines, express services to Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich, and local services such as Clacton-on-Sea and Walton-on-the-Naze in the East Anglia region. These routes are collectively known as the Greater Anglia network.

There are two weekday evening shuttle services to Barking, calling only at Stratford, which are operated by c2c. All other c2c services depart from Fenchurch Street railway station, although Liverpool Street is also used by c2c during engineering work. Both National Express East Anglia and c2c are owned by National Express Group.

History

The station was built on the site of the original Bethlem Royal Hospital, was opened to traffic on 2 February by the Great Eastern Railway and was completely operational from 1 November. From this date the original terminal, Bishopsgate, closed to passengers. It reopened as a goods station in 1881 but was destroyed by fire on 5 December 1964. The site is now being redeveloped as part of the extension of London Underground’s East London line to form part of the London Overground network.

The new station was designed by the Eastern’s chief engineer, Edward Wilson and was built by John Mowlem & Co. on a site which had been occupied by Bethlem Royal Hospital from the 13th Century to the 17th Century. A City of London Corporation plaque commemorating the station’s construction hangs on the wall of the adjoining former Great Eastern Hotel, which was designed by Charles Barry (junior) (son of Sir Charles Barry) and his brother Edward Middleton Barry, and also built by John Mowlem & Co. The station was named after the street on which it stands, which in turn was named in honour of British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, having been built as part of an extension of the City of London towards the end of his term in office.

The construction of the station was due to the desire of the company to gain a terminal closer to the city than the one opened by the predecessor Eastern Counties Railway, at Shoreditch, that had opened on 1 July 1840. This station was renamed “Bishopsgate” in 1846. The construction proved extremely expensive due to the cost of acquiring property and many people were displaced due to the large scale demolitions. The desire to link the GER lines to those of the sub-surface Metropolitan Railway, a link seldom used and relatively soon abandoned, also meant that the GER’s lines had to drop down to below ground level from the existing viaducts east of Bishopsgate. This means that there are considerable gradients leading out of the station. Lord Salisbury, who was chairman of the Great Eastern in 1870, said that the Liverpool Street extension was “one of the greatest mistakes ever committed in connection with a railway.”

The station was the first place in London to be hit by German Gotha bomber aircraft during World War I. The May 1917 bombing, when the station took a direct hit from 1,000 pounds of bombs, killed 162 people. During World War II a bomb that landed in Bishopsgate completely shattered the glass roofing.

Many Jewish refugee children arrived at Liverpool Street in the late 1930s, as part of the Kindertransport. In September 2003 the sculpture Für Das Kind Kindertransport Memorial by artist Flor Kent, who conceived the project, was installed in the station. It consisted of a specialized glass case with original objects and a bronze sculpture of a real girl, a direct descendant of a child rescued by Sir Nicholas Winton who unveiled the work. Due to lapses in maintenance the Für Das Kind collection was transferred to the Imperial War Museum.

The station was extensively modified between 1985 and 1992, including bringing all the platforms in the main shed up to the same end point and constructing a new underground booking office, but its façade, Victorian cast-iron pillars, and the memorial for Great Eastern Railway employees who died in the Great War were retained. The redevelopment coincided with the closure and demolition of neighbouring Broad Street station and the construction of the Broadgate development in its place. Liverpool Street was officially re-opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. At this time the giant timetable board, which is suspended above the station concourse, was installed at great expense. However due to technical difficulties there was a long delay after the official opening before it became operational. It was one of the last remaining mechanical “flapper board” display boards at a UK railway station and certainly the largest, but was removed from service in September 2007 and replaced by electronic boards.

The Great Eastern Hotel was extensively refurbished between 1997 and 1999, re-opening as a boutique hotel. The hotel incorporates three restaurants: “Aurora” and “Fishmarket” cater to the higher-price expense account business lunch market while “Terminus” is a mid-range brasserie to service the City workers. The complex includes a sushi bar and two pubs.

The station has been twinned with Amsterdam Centraal Station since 1993, and there is a plaque marking this fact on the concourse close to the main entrance to the Underground.