page_title: Elephant & Castle tube station
section_title: Northern line
hierarchical_section_title: Elephant & Castle tube station / History / Northern line
caption_attribution_description: English: Geographic Map of the Baker Street &amp; Waterloo Railway, 1904.
context_page_description: Elephant & Castle is a London Underground station in the London Borough of Southwark in south London. It is on the Bank branch of the Northern line between Kennington and Borough stations, and is the southern terminus of the Bakerloo line, the next station being Lambeth North. The station is in both Travelcard Zones 1 and 2. The Northern line station was opened in 1890 by the City and South London Railway while the Bakerloo line station was opened sixteen years later by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway. There is out-of-station interchange with the nearby Elephant & Castle National Rail station.
  A girl born at the station in 1924 was the first baby to be born on the Underground network. The Bakerloo line building remains much as originally constructed and is a typical Leslie Green structure. The Northern line building was designed by Thomas Phillips Figgis, and was rebuilt several times until the current structure opened in 2003. Transport for London is currently planning a major upgrade to the station. A Bakerloo line extension south to Camberwell was planned and approved in 1931 but construction never started.
context_section_description: Between 1883–86, a route was planned by the City and South London Railway (C&SLR), then known as the City of London & Southwark Subway (CL&SS), from King William Street via Elephant & Castle to Stockwell and Clapham Common. The entire route was approved on 25 July 1890 and the station opened on 18 December 1890 as part of the first deep-level tube between King William Street and Stockwell.
  In November 1891, the C&SLR recognised the deficiencies of the section between Borough station and King William Street. A new route was chosen with a different pair of tunnels, avoiding this section. Near Borough, the new tunnels would branch off to London Bridge to form an interchange with the mainline station and then north through the City of London to Angel. The plan was approved on 24 August 1893 following a delay. The Act also incorporated another bill of 1893 to grant more time to build the southern extension to Clapham. The new route and the first section of the northern extension from Borough to Moorgate opened on 25 February 1900, and the King William Street diversion was closed. The southern extension to Clapham Common opened on 3 June 1900. Work continued on the rest of the northern extension and it opened on 17 November 1901.
  In 1912, the C&SLR submitted another bill to increase its capacity by enlarging its tunnels to the larger diameter used for the tunnels of the more recently built railways to allow larger, more modern rolling stock to be used. Together, the works proposed in these bills would enable the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR)'s trains to run over the C&SLR's route and vice versa, effectively combining the two separate railways. Tunnel enlargement works only restarted after World War I when an extension of time was granted in February 1919. The Moorgate to Clapham Common section reopened on 1 December 1924, approximately eight months after the rest of the line.
caption: Route diagram which shows the route from Paddington to Elephant & Castle.
exif: {}