Today, we're going to take a look at Perivale station. It's on the western section of the
Central line in the Borough of Ealing. It looks very much like your typical Underground station
of the 1940s. But what if I were to tell you that it's not an Underground station at all? Well,
that would be a lie, it clearly is an Underground station, it says right there on the sign.
But it wasn't built as such. The line here was built as a joint venture between two main line
railway companies: the Great Western Railway and the Great Central Railway. It provided a
link between the Great Western's main line and the Great Central's Chiltern main line.
The story behind this is complicated but, long story short, the two companies built this railway
to give them a better route between London and the Midlands. The Great Central wanted to get
to London, the Great Western wanted to get to the Midlands. It opened in 1903. In 1904,
the Great Western Railway built Perivale station, which was ever-so-slightly to the west of the
current station. It was a small station with wooden platforms and a corrugated iron shelter,
like this. In the early 20th century, the Great Western built a lot of small stations like this
one. At that time, trams were really eating into commuter traffic, because they were cheaper and
more convenient than trains. The Great Western way of dealing with this was to build a whole
lot of very basic stations on the cheap, served by single coach trains, built close together
in the suburbs. Trains ran from Paddington, but, and this may only be interesting to tube nerds,
from the Metropolitan Railway station at Bishop's Road rather than the main Great Western Railway
station. Perivale doesn't seem to have been too popular. In 1915, it was closed, but in 1920 it
reopened and in 1922 it was renamed Perivale Halt. This is a bit odd because, well, Perivale station
had always been a halt. The Great Western Railway actually had a clear definition of the difference
between a halt and a station. A halt was a station with no staff and no signal attached to it.
But despite this, they were weirdly inconsistent about what they actually called a "halt."
I'm planning a whole video on this subject and the vexed question of halts in general. Anyway,
point is, Perivale was a halt, but they didn't call it that until 1922. Perivale was a sleepy
sort of place at this time. In fact, the 1921 census listed a population of only 114 people,
which probably explains why the station wasn't so popular. But things were changing. The A40
road made Central London easily accessible by car, and the growth of electric train services made the
suburbs in general a very attractive place to live. Factories popped up around Perivale and
housing estates were built. It looked like little Perivale Halt was due an upgrade. In 1935, the New
Works Programme was published by London Transport. This was to be an overhaul of London's transport.
As part of this, several commuter railways were to be connected to and absorbed into the underground.
Kind of like what happened with the Elizabeth line more recently, but that's another story.
Anyway, the line from North Acton to Denham, which Perivale is on, was to be taken over by
the Central line. In the end, the takeover only went as far as West Ruislip. The Great Western
actually had worked with the Central line before - the line from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway
had been built as a collaboration between the Great Western and the Central London Railway,
who were the original owners of the Central line. The deal was that the cost and the... work
of the New Works Programme would be divided three ways, proportional to the companies affected.
London Transport would cover the bulk of it, the London and North Eastern railway would take on 20%
and the Great Western 5%, because really that one line was about all the Great Western was
handing over. So as part of this, the Great Western assumed responsibility
for rebuilding the stations on that line. Perivale is basically the Great Western Railway's take on
the concept of an Underground station. The Great Western in general tended to be fairly
conservative in its aesthetics. For comparison, here's East Acton, which they built in 1920. So
it's quite interesting to see them trying to match the rather experimental modernist
buildings that London Transport were putting up. Perivale was designed by Brian Lewis,
the company architect, and completed under Dr F F Curtis after Lewis moved to Australia.
I actually think they succeeded. It's definitely up there in design quality.
Lewis was quite fond of this sort of curving canopy, which you can also see at Greenford.
I have to say I do find the platform level design a bit boring, but it certainly serves its purpose.
Originally, it would have been a little larger and incorporated a tower and a
longer wing containing three shops, but the design was cut back during development.
I still think it's very distinctive, and given that this is a largely residential area, you don't
want a station that's too overwhelming. It's built around a reinforced concrete frame clad in brick.
The New Works Programme was delayed by the Second World War, so construction on the new station was
begun in 1946. It had rather rashly been promised that the station would open on the 30th of June
1947. Bad weather and a general shortage of labor delayed completion of the building,
but nevertheless they did manage to get it open. They built a temporary entrance within the shell
of the incomplete station out of bits of Anderson air raid shelters. I don't think it would give
me much confidence in the build quality of the station if I had to enter via an air raid shelter,
but history does not record whether this was a common opinion. From the start, it was served by
the electric trains of the London Underground, which were a world away from the basic service
offered by the Great Western Railway in 1904. It typically sees around 2.4 to 2.5 million
passengers a year, which again is a big step up from those early days. In 2011 it was given Grade
II listing in recognition both of its aesthetics and the number of original features that survive.
I think this in itself is a mark of quality - that the station was so fit for purpose that
it's gone three quarters of a century with no need for substantial alteration. But considering that
it's a station built by a company that weren't planning to actually use it in an attempt to match
someone else's design principles, I think they did a pretty good job.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this copycat Tale from the Tube. If you did,
please do click the like button and consider subscribing for more,
click the bell icon to be notified when new videos drop, all that. On the same day as I filmed this,
I also got some footage at Hanger Lane, so expect that in the not-too-distant future. Thanks as
always to my donors on Ko-Fi and Patreon, you are the reinforced concrete to my brick façade.
And I'll see you all again very soon for another Tale from the Tube.