Kew Gardens is a Grade II–listed

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

and

London Overground London Overground (also known simply as the Overground) is a suburban rail network serving London and its environs. Established in 2007 to take over Silverlink Metro routes, (via archive.org). it now serves a large part of Greater London as w ...

station in Kew, in the

London Borough of Richmond upon Thames The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames () in southwest London forms part of Outer London and is the only London borough on both sides of the River Thames. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas amalgamated under the Londo ...

. It first opened in 1869 and is now managed by London Underground. The station, which is in Travelcard Zones 3 and 4, is served by both the District line on the London Underground and the

North London line The North London line (NLL) is a railway line which passes through the inner suburbs of west, north-west, north, and east London, England between Richmond in the south-west and Stratford in the east, avoiding central London. Its route is a ro ...

on the London Overground, and is situated midway between and stations. The station is the nearest to Kew Gardens, about to the west, and

The National Archives National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives. Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...

, about to the north east. Kew Gardens Station Footbridge, also a

Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

-listed structure, is next to the station, on the southern side.

Access

The main entrance to the station is at the junction of Station Parade, Station Avenue and Station Approach, about from Sandycombe Road ( B353). There is also an entrance, which is wheelchair-accessible, on North Road, on the other side of the railway line; the two entrances are connected by a pedestrian subway.

History

The station was opened by the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) on 1 January 1869, in an area of market gardens and

orchard An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of ...

s.The rural character of the area around the station is shown on the . The station was located on a new L&SWR branch line to

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, Californi ...

built from the West London Joint Railway starting north of Addison Road station (now ). The line ran through

Shepherd's Bush Shepherd's Bush is a district of West London, England, within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham west of Charing Cross, and identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Although primarily residential in character ...

and

Hammersmith Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London ...

via a now closed curve and

Grove Road The A1205 is a road in east London which runs north to south parallel to the Regent's Canal and connects South Hackney and Victoria Park with the A13 at Limehouse. It is approximately 2 miles (3 km) in length, and runs in a roughly S ...

station (also now closed) in Hammersmith. Via a short connection from the North & South Western Junction Railway (N&SWJR) to Gunnersbury the line was also served by the North London Railway (NLR). Between 1 June 1870 and 31 October 1870, the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

(GWR) briefly ran services from to via Hammersmith & City Railway (now the

Hammersmith & City line The Hammersmith & City line is a London Underground line that runs between Hammersmith in west London and in east London. Printed in pink on the Tube map, it serves 29 stations over . Between and it skirts the City of London, the capital's fi ...

) tracks to Grove Road then on the L&SWR tracks through Kew Gardens. On 1 June 1877, the

District Railway The Metropolitan District Railway, also known as the District Railway, was a passenger railway that served London from 1868 to 1933. Established in 1864 to complete an " inner circle" of lines connecting railway termini in London, the first par ...

(DR, now the District line) opened a short extension from its terminus at Hammersmith to connect to the L&SWR tracks east of station. The DR then began running trains over the L&SWR tracks to Richmond. On 1 October 1877, the

Metropolitan Railway The Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met) was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933, its main line heading north-west from the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the Middlesex su ...

(MR, now the Metropolitan line) restarted the GWR's former service to Richmond via Grove Road station. The DR's service between Richmond, Hammersmith and central London was more direct than the NLR's route via , the L&SWR's or the MR's routes via Grove Road station or the L&SWR's other route from Richmond via . From 1 January 1894, the GWR began sharing the MR's Richmond service and served Kew Gardens once again, meaning that passengers from Kew Gardens could travel on the services of five operators. Following the

electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. The broad meaning of the term, such as in the history of technology, economic histo ...

of the DR's own tracks north of in 1903, the DR funded the electrification of the tracks on the Richmond branch, including those through Kew Gardens. This was completed on 1 August 1905 and DR services on the line were then operated with

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

trains. However, the L&SWR, NLR, GWR and MR services continued to be

steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizatio ...

-hauled. MR services were withdrawn on 31 December 1906 and GWR services were withdrawn on 31 December 1910, leaving operations at Kew Gardens and Gunnersbury to the DR (by then known as the District Railway), the NLR and L&SWR. By 1916, the L&SWR's route through Hammersmith was being out-competed by the District to such a degree that the L&SWR withdrew its service between Richmond and Addison Road on 3 June 1916, leaving the District as the sole operator over that route. A brass plaque at the station commemorates its reopening on 7 October 1989 by

Michael Portillo Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo (; born 26 May 1953) is a British journalist, broadcaster and former politician. His broadcast series include railway documentaries such as '' Great British Railway Journeys'' and '' Great Continental Railway Jour ...

MP,

Minister of State Minister of State is a title borne by politicians in certain countries governed under a parliamentary system. In some countries a Minister of State is a Junior Minister of government, who is assigned to assist a specific Cabinet Minister. I ...

for

Transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

, after it had been refurbished.

Present

The two-storey yellow brick station buildings are unusually fine examples of mid-Victorian railway architecture and are protected as part of the Kew Gardens conservation area. The station is one of the few remaining 19th-century stations on the North London Line and had one of the last illuminated banner signals on the

, possibly because of the footbridge. This signal was replaced by an electronic version in 2011. Kew Gardens is the only station on the London Underground network that has a pub attached to it. The pub has a door (no longer in use) which leads out onto platform 1. Previously known as ''The Railway'', the pub reopened after renovation in 2013 as ''The Tap on the Line''.

Kew Gardens Station Footbridge

Kew-Gardens-Footbridge-Plaque (16891074506)

South view of Kew Gardens station platform with Underground train arriving

The footbridge to the south of the station is also noteworthy and is

-listed in its own right. The railway line bisected Kew, but it was not until 1912 that the bridge was provided to allow residents to cross the tracks safely (previously, a level crossing was used, with the added disadvantage of delaying trains). It is a rare surviving example of a

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low ultimate tensile strength, tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion ...

structure built using a pioneering technique devised by the French engineer

François Hennebique François Hennebique (26 April 1842 – 7 March 1921) was a French engineer and self-educated builder who patented his pioneering reinforced-concrete construction system in 1892, integrating separate elements of construction, such as the column ...

. The bridge has a narrow deck and very high walls, originally designed to protect its users' clothing from the smoke of steam trains passing underneath. It also has protrusions on either side of the deck to deflect smoke away from the bridge structure. It was restored in 2004 with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, in a project led by The Kew Society. In July 2017, concerns were expressed about the structural safety of the bridge.

Services

Kew Gardens station plaque commemorating 1989 reopening

Kew Gardens currently has the following

and

National Rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the ...

services, which are operated by the

London Underground S7 stock The London Underground S7 and S8 Stock, commonly referred to as S Stock, is a type of passenger train running on the London Underground's subsurface lines since 2010. Manufactured by Bombardier Transportation's Derby Litchurch Lane Works, the S ...

and

British Rail Class 378 The British Rail Class 378 ''Capitalstar'' is an electric multiple unit passenger train specifically designed for the London Overground network. It is part of Bombardier Transportation's Electrostar family. A total of 57 five-car trains have ...

London Underground

*6 trains per hour (tph) to Upminster *6 tph to

London Overground

* 4 tph to Stratford * 4 tph to

* 4 tph each way on Sundays

Connections

There are no lifts. Platform 2 (going towards central London) is at ground level. Platform 1 (going towards Richmond) is reached by a short set of 10 steps; there is also a wheelchair-accessible ramp. The National Archives is on the Platform 1 side of the station. The shops of Kew village, Sandycombe Road, and the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 ...

are on the Platform 2 side, and visitors to those locations who alight at Platform 1 must cross the tracks via either the tunnel underneath (left of the main exit, 15 steps down, then 22 steps up) or the footbridge (right of the main exit, 30 steps up, then 30 steps down). The simplest alternative for those wishing to avoid the steps is to remain on the train while it travels one stop to Richmond and returns.

London Buses London Buses is the subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) that manages most bus services in London, England. It was formed following the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that transferred control of London Regional Transport (LRT) bus s ...

route 110 serves the station.

In popular culture

Kew Gardens station appeared in the BBC

comedy drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

'' Love Soup'' (Series 2, Episode 1 – ''Smoke and Shadows'', 1 March 2008) as the fictional "

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th ...

West" station.

Notes and references

External links

Transport for London: Kew Gardens Underground station
** ** ** * from

{{LB Richmond Railway stations in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Tube stations in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Former London and South Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1869 Railway stations served by London Overground London Underground stations located above ground District line stations 1869 establishments in England Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Grade II listed railway stations Kew, London Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew