Park Royal Station

Park Royal Station was opened on March 1st 1936. Built to replace a previous station from 1903, the new station was part of the New Works Programme of 1935-40, as London Transport looked to overhaul old stations to fit in with the new look pioneered by Charles Holden’s early 1930s stations. The original station was called Park Royal & Twyford Abbey, serving the District Railway, and was located to the north of the current station.It had been built to serve the Royal Agricultural Showgrounds site which opened the same year, and from which the area derives its name. That station closed on July 2nd 1931 and services began from the new site a day later with a temporary entrance until the completion of the new station.

Image from London Transport Museum.

The new Park Royal was designed by Herbert Welch and Felix Lander, who had also designed the neighbouring Hanger Hill estate for developers Haymills from 1928. Lander had worked in the office of Charles Holden, so was well equipped to design a new station.The 1936 station building is very much in the Holden mould, but with a more eye-catching profile, possibly at the behest of London Transport chief Frank Pick, who had wanted to build more dynamic stations, able to act as adverts for the LT brand. 

The ticket hall of Park Royal Station. Image from London Transport Museum.

The ticket hall is circular in the mode of Chiswick Park or Southgate with clerestory windows and a central passimeter ticket booth, and a tall, square tower proclaiming its presence to motorists speeding by on Western Avenue. Connected to this is a curving parade of shops and flats, all constructed from the same light brown brick. As with a number of new tube stations from the 1930s, the name of the stop changed in the years after it opened, beginning as Park Royal (Hanger Hill) before dropping the name in brackets in 1947. ​

Park Royal Hotel and Garage. Image from RIBApix.

The best view of the station is from the eastbound platform where the arrangement of volumes and shapes, retangular, circular, square, step upwards in height towards the roadside. This was the only station designed by Welch and Lander, and unlike some of the other New Works stations (like East Finchley and Rayners Lane), did not need to be redesigned by Holden. The station was Grade II listed in January 1987. 

Park Royal is one of many stations featured in our London Tube Stations 1924-61 book, examining the modernist era of station design led by Charles Holden. Get your copy HERE