As a "Box Boy" employed at Arnos Grove signal cabin in 1963 I recall being told about this by Signalman Jack 'Ginger' Heather. I was also told that the tons of mixed debris that fell into the station when the bomb struck was removed with the recovery of those who were killed and injured and dumped around the trackside open section to the north of the tunnel portal. Permanent Way trackstaff said there was still childrens shoes and other clothing visible up to the early sixties. Later as Motorman driving trains through this section I did sometimes spare a thought to those who were lost down there.
What a beautiful piece of architecture, we are very lucky that the architect had the courage to add his own fingerprint on the building (the octagonal part) while still adhere to the art deco style
Octagonal brick-faced buildings became quite fashionable in the late 1970s. The World's End Estate in Chelsea being the most delightfully exuberant example.
As one who spent a significant portion of a career in transit architecture, I can marvel at the consistent quality of the architectural approach of Charles Holden (including those whom he directed) to his sites. There is no mistaking the entrance, the relationship to surrounding development, the resolution of the multiple viewpoints provided by the surrounding streets. This is particularly significant considering that his station designs often proceeded the development that would later surround them.
Excellent video as ever Jago. BG was my local tube stop when I worked briefly in London at the Ranelagh Pub just up the road. The steep escalators were a regular "quick win" for the sniffer dogs of the Met/BTP picking off those unfortunate souls carrying "substances" they shouldn't have been. By time they'd seen the dogs, turning around on the escalator wasn't an option! Good times 20+ years ago .
Many years ago, I used to use Bounds Green occasionally, but was only dimly aware that "an incident" had occurred there years before. Despite it's excellent safety record, when something does go seriously wrong on the underground for whatever reason, the results are uncompromisingly horrific. Here, Balham, Bethnal Green, Moorgate, Kings Cross. All unimaginably terrible ways to die.
Always had a soft spot for Bounds Green as its my local tube station. Well, I say local, but as local as it can be to North Staffordshire! It's the closest to my relatives when I stay with them!
Bounds Green makes a brief appearance in a mid 1980s episode of Grange Hill (Series 9 episode 13 - the first of two episodes focusing on what pupils get up to at half-term; episode 14 has one of the most iconic moments in the whole show) showing the station at the time as Robbie and Ziggy twice trying to fare dodge in pre gates days. Archway also makes an appearance for those interested.
Is that the show about English school kids? I think I watched a few episodes of it when I was sick off school. I think it got its time slot so Australian kids wouldn't dead the idea of getting better and going back to school so much, since it wasn't as drab and regimented as in England. The London tube still looked more exciting than the handful of underground lines we had in Sydney, though.
I recall Grange Hill starting the summer I started secondary school, 1978? Great show. I was amused to see in later life there was actually a tube station called Grange Hill.
'The latest railway station architecture- come and see it'. At the bottom of the Great Depression, a vision of the future that could be marketed as an attraction in its own right- a "modern" style that has become timeless. What a team Ashfield, Pick and Holden made.
Ah! Bounds Green, the Holy Grail of Kebab. The Mecca of mediterranean cuisine. It's miles and miles away from me, and have to take several trains, but I always venture up there every year for a bit of sheftalia, grilled loundza, pork shish, quails, bottles of Keo beer and a generous shot of Meataxa brandy for the digestion. It feels like time has stood in that part of London, but it's just my nostalgia being kind to my mind, I suppose. Certainly the tube station plays a large part maintaining that illusion. As does the quiet suburb serenity of the place flowing like gentle clouds through the dusky sky, broken intermittently by the crescendo of the occasional robbery, attempted burglary or gangland stabbing; or the early morning rats gnawing rabidly the dumped used condoms and syringes congregated in concrete corners. Bounds Green. The Good, The Bad And the Ugly.
Interesting video Jago. The death of Belgian refugees is intriguing, hard to find anything, at least from my location in Australia, on deaths of Belgian refugees/citizens living in London during the war. One of my father's older brothers lived in London, served in Belgian army in WW1 and married the english nurse he met when recovering from wounds. Married in London before he returned to Europe, they settled in Belgium after the war until she fell pregnant and they travelled to London to be with her family, a son was born but they seperated around 1938. He stayed in London but the last trace of him I can find is the census at the start of the war, then nothing. I only managed to track the son, my cousin, down around 4 months after he passed and he hadn't married , so no family.
Another superb edition. I passed by this station dozens of times. I always liked the Holden architecture, but what I especially looked out for was the large-size, older style UndergrounD roundel with the prominent U and D each end of the sign.
Perfect timing for this station, this was my local while I was staying in the area a few days ago! Didn’t even realise what happened here during the war since I was typically in a rush. Great video as always!
Another excellent video - if only for the fact that as a native North Londoner in my childhood (Muswell Hill) I knew this station very well. You mention that this station is now listed. This prompted me to recall that you often mention this fact and so, what about a video telling us about what London Underground stations are NOT listed, and maybe why.
Listing doesn't stop them being modernised often out of all recognition to the original, metres of plastic panelling and glaringly bright lighting. Don't get me started on the often spiral emergency stairs (fun to run up when one was young to see how fit one is) being replaced by an accessibility lift.
There are 71 listed stations out of 272. The - um - unlisted list - begins with Aldgate, Alperton, Amersham, and Angel, and ends with Wimbeldon Park, Wood Lane, Woodford, and Woodside Park. I'm not 100% convinced that a video covering all of them in one go would be of reasonable length.
Another wonderful and informative video. The Piccadilly line was very much my line until in many ways the Victoria line usurped it in 1968,Sevensisters being a 15 minute walk which allowed very easy access into London. As a model railway nut the Mecca for me was Beaties of Southgate so a trip from Turnpike Lane yo Southgate was frequent. As someone who moved from London to the land of Snakes spiders and giant fish that seem to enjoy biting your bleedin leg off I realise the things I miss such as the tube. I always loved the art Deco style of these wonderful stations includes those massive concrete structures around Cockfosters. I never realised that Bounds Green was bombed and certainly didn't realise they were prone to damage. I knew of the tragedy of Bethnal Green though. Sadly on the extension from Finsbury Park poor old Manor House missed out on the Art Deco building style. Actuality something you may be interested in or even know about is a ventilation shift half way between Manor House and Turnpike Lane. Colina Road forms a T Junction at Green Lanes and just behind Green Lanes in Colina is an Art Deco style ventilation shift. Somewhere I read once that it was planned to put a station. Whether the widened tunnels for the station are there I do not know.
Yes, I live right next to the ventilation shaft. It was temporarily sealed from sight by a construction sight but is now in plain view. We stuck our phones in threw a crack in the door and saw two blue extractor fans i presume. It seemed clean and in use but made no sound as other shafts do. There is also a ventilation shaft almost identical inbetween Bounds Green and Wood Green, which he may have missed. You can both hear and smell the tubes if you go close enough
I'm a little perplexed. My parents moved to Bounds Green - or, as it's occasionally identified locally (depending on which lights are off) 'BODS GREEN' - in 1957, so I'm quite familiar with the place and yet, I've never seen the commemorative plaque. So, by my reckoning, I've been drunk for about sixty five years. What's that? Oh, how kind. A pint of Abbott would be lovely. Cheers!
The design may vary from Holden but it seems to fit the road and locality well at surface level. TfL's tube stations need an external repair on the cracked renderwork.
Jago, does your algorithm for selecting stations have similarities to the rules of the Mornington Crescent game on "I'm sorry I haven't a clue (Radio 4)?"
😊i remember many years ago my great aunt pointing out where the roof had come in on the platform as she had lived not far away and remembered the explosion when the bomb hit. Later on in life I viewed the photos of the destruction in the LT Museum photographic archive.
I lived very near here in the fifties and sixties, and used this station very often. I didn't know about the wartime tragedy. Thanks for making me better informed.
Based on this video, I have two questions that both sound like interesting topics for a video: - What sections of underground have been damaged and subsequently repaired? (Not just WWII bombing, but also the 7 July 2005 bombing, the 1987 Kings Cross fire, flooding, etc.) - What parts of the overground railways have been damaged during WWII? I think enough videos cover the history of tube stations that were hit, but not non-tube stations.
Well, I didn’t even know there was a Bounds Green. Is there a No Bounds Green? I reckon it may have added to the romance of the name if it was called Bounders Green.
According to Wood and Dempster in "The Narrow Margin" , on the evening of 13th October 1940, 100 hundred raiders penetrated the coast of South-England, with 70 making way towards London (The rest went to Bristol, Wales, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Birmingham and Dundee. By One bomb hit Stanmore station (Presume the Underground Station).It was suspected that the bomb had been intended for RAF Stanmore, then the heart of Britain's Air Defence Organisation. The authors state that there was a waxing moon prevailing at the time, perhaps this upset the visually sighted bomb aimers equipment in a number of aircraft, or perhaps the aim was to hit near surface underground stations being used as shelters, wihich would be considered soft targets, and a means of disrupting light industry labour force in London Apparently, at this time, Hitler had conceded defeat in the Battle Of Britain, so that it was concluded that the main aim of these raids was to harass, . . Mainly the RAF. The Luftwaffe had also changed6 tactics, favouring high altitude raids, so that might account for bombs off target and might explain why the bomb created such a large crater - its terminal velocity meant it penetrated a long-way down before detionating.. On the other hand, the Germans did possess some heavy high explosive bombs . The "Herman" at 1000 kiograms and the "Satan" at 1800 kilograms, the later in particular, capable of creating a 60 foot crater when detonated. Five German aircraft were zhot down. Also, this in the LT Museum archive:- www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/photographs/item/2002-2970 And this:- nickcooper625.blogspot.com/2010/10/1314-october-1940-london-underground-on.html
Bit of long reply, but it is relevant to discovering facts about air raids on Britain. I've just done my annual Pie & Priestley: celebrating the Bradford writer J.B.Priestley and a meat & potato pie shop that survived Bradford's 'only' air raid, to steam defiance at Hitler, Goering and the whole gang of them. I've done this since 1998. This year an old lady called me out. She was born just before the war, and remembers a second Bradford air raid, and gave me a date. The first air raid is only easy to find because Priestley broadcast a 'Postscript' about it on the 28th September 1940, after returning to his home city. I have looked at the Bradford papers for all of August and September 1940, and the only reference to an air raid is about Priestley's broadcast! This second air raid, apparently, killed nobody; so it would not appear in casualty lists. I'll try to find if it actually happened, but I know proving it will be hard. The one certain raid; and the later random, abandoned, Luftwaffe bomber that crashed and killed 4 people in Bradford are certain because Bradford historians have read the German reports filed at the time. I think my old lady was mis-remembering, because somebody else would have looked at Luftwaffe reports if it happened, but I do not know that until I have checked. So there is confusion about Bradford being bombed, and it almost never got bombed. London!!!!? There will be local reports, and argument, about the Belgium plaque, but you have to find the local paper of the time to trace it to the source. There may be a history done any time up to the 90's from first hand memory or records, but it would have been printed, so internet is blind.
Funny. I was just there for the first time this afternoon. As I came around the corner and spotted the station building I was struck by the architecture and immediately thought "that's the kind of place that Jago Hazard would surely have a thing or two to say about."
Seeing as you like to talk about the architecture of the stations you clearly have an interest in this area. May I recommend "Abroad with Jonathon Meades" ? I think you would love it tbh.
So that is what Frank Pick really looks like! I saw that Geoff Marshall played him in Jay Foreman’s latest video. It is so fun when RU-vidrs appear in each other’s videos!…..
The algorithm that decides the content and order od tube story content could easily be a list, attached to a shed side, and a dart thrown to make the decision. Random is good. Don't get as much time for RU-vid anymore,I signed up to Readly, lol. Thanks for the vid, interesting content as always, an Octogon is a geometric and putting windows on a corner was a 1930s feature on suburban housing, albeit Windows with a radius.
Alas, the bomb that fell on the station can't really be considered an accident. Not that it was dropped there intentionally, but that in WWII, the idea of dropping a bomb on any target smaller than a particular neighborhood was pretty unlikely. Many German bombers, attacking at night and with the British blacking out all lights, managed to miss entire cities, until the Germans developed a system of radio guidance. This led to the first known instance of electronic warfare, the Battle of the Beams. London was easier to hit because there was no way to camouflage the Thames, but it could still be tricky. It's possible that, with only a single plane dropping a single bomb, it was a nuisance/terror strike. The Germans would actually drop parachute mines (that is, naval mines descending by parachute) on land, adding even more randomness to the destruction.
Another excellent historical survey. Although I passed through many times while employed as Piccadilly train crew I never had the chance to look at the exterior (my boss would have considered the delay unacceptable) and so this is the first time I've become aware that the surface building is different from it's siblings. Has it been told I wonder?
Roger, You could visit a few stations during your off-duty time, now and again, but I know the feeling. There was one station where I worked for a few weeks, arriving and departing on the train, never venturing outside the public entrance. Saw it for the first time, decades later.
Since it is unlikely to ever meet its siblings, perhaps it is best not to tell it, lest it get some kind of complex. Of course, I suppose the reverse is true: it could revel in its originality instead! At any rate, it’s a lovely station. 🙂
Inside the station seems different at platform level, almost more like a central line eastern extension one with the red detailing rather than a maybe expected Piccadilly blue. Is that a non Johnson font used on a few roundels and at the external station name elements ? Not a place I recall going to, and only through a few times
Remember my parents and grandparents they all lived in the Edmonton/Wood Green mentioning about the bombing of Bounds Green. Was an event that was remembered but never talked about in detail. Think it one of those things that left a scare on all those that lived locally
Sloane Square (that I used for years and years) had just been rebuilt when it rec'd a direct hit, I do not think it was properly rebuilt until the late forties,
It is perhaps sad that one of the unsung heroes of His Majesty's Railway Inspectorate finds his greatest claim to fame to be a casual mention as "one colonel Mount" 🤔 Col. Sir Alan Mount was a member of the Royal Corps of Engineers and the inspecting engineer responsible for investigating several greater and lesser railway disasters in the 1930s and '40s--a period notably including WW2. The late O.S. Nock once praised his exceptional qualities of "penetrating inquiry, tact, humanity, and ... all-round knowledge of railway engineering and operating practice" and today he is perhaps best remembered by rail historians as the investigating officer into the Norton Fitzwarren disaster of November 1940. However, he also investigated many accidents and incidents in the London area--both wartime disasters such as Bounds Green and peacetime tragedies from the April 1937 Battersea Park crash to the October 1947 Purley Oaks crash. Not as colorful a character as, say, Yerkes, but perhaps worth looking into 😇
I used to live in Fletton Road about a hundred metres south of the station. When sitting at the end of the garden we could hear the tube trains passing under the ground. Bowes Park station was at the end of our road and on Sunday a Class 45 diesel used to chug quietly in the station siding. The Hertford line would be worth a video?
I used to live locally and the tiles at that end of the platform were never replaced until the plaque was installed. The story I heard was a lone bomber missed it's target-believed to be the gas works by New Southgate station and circled for a while before dropping it's bombs. I have also heard a story that the station was not evacuated and that people were allowed to carry on sleeping there despite the incident.
My office was in Bounds Green Road and it was bombed twice. The second time was by the IRA when they placed a bomb on a train. I watched as casualties' were taken out of the station. My business partner was on holiday but I saw his father on a stretcher and visited him that night at North Middlesex hospital
Thanks. An algorithm for selecting a 'subject' station? I would have thought that the process would be nothing more complicated than pinning a Tube, or should I say TfL, Map on a dart board and hurling the appropriate missiles at it until you: 1. Hit a tube station as opposed to any of all the other types of station on the map. 2. Hit a tube station that you hadn't already covered. Thanks again.
I find that old London Underground stations that were built when the London Underground expanded do have such characteristics, style and history. And of course when it served as a air raid during the WWI and WWII. And the Piccadilly Line 1973 Stocks are still going about but in few years they are to be replaced by new tube trains that Siemens have won the contract to manufacture new tube trains for the Piccadilly Line.
LeviNZ begs to opine that, from limited experience actually using the Tube on three different trips/years, part of the appeal of the stations is the tilework.
Interesting that you comment on the oddness of corner windows for this station, then at 4:11 you show Balham, which also features a similar sort of corner window.
Having always lived on the northern line, I have never used it as a station but driven past it a million times (slight exaggeration) including for driving lessons. As a building, I have always admired it.
Ah… Towards the end of this excellent (if heretical for Northern Liners) video there is a maze decoration. Any information on this or does it show the way back to ‘home’ turf like the Finchleys? Personally, I used to hope on the 102.
My guess about the number of injured from the WW2 bomb can be: those that were hospitalized immediately, those who came in later after they realized how badly wounded they were, and those (including the second group) that got bandaged by the Ambulance Service (and others like doctors &. nurses who were there also seeking shelter, or had clinics nearby, or perhaps even family members..) The Belgium/British mix up sounds like someone Flipped the numbers. Since one claim is 16 Belgium and 3 British while the other is 3 Belgium and 16 British... 80 years later it may be impossible to figure out which one is correct. It may be the only chance to do so is to look at the names of the dead. If the majority "sound like" they were British (especially their first names) then only 3 Belgiums died.
Curious about how my fellow nationals resided in London (of all places) to seek refuge. It's like fleeing from a war situation only to end up in another war situation.
New learning for me; I didn't know there was an octagonal station. I definitely like the look of it. It's an interesting intermediate between Holden's rectangular boxes and circular drums. Intrigued too about the algorithm for episodes - but is it a mathematical formula or simply dependent on order of filming opportunities, with some variety between types (stations, lines, trains, local buildings)?
