Euston Station, UK

Euston station is one of a number central London railway terminus stations. Located in the London Borough of Camden, it is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line, the UK's busiest inter-city railway. Euston is the eleventh-busiest station in Britain and the country's busiest inter-city passenger terminal, being the gateway from London to the West Midlands, North West England, North Wales and Scotland.

Intercity express passenger services to the major cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and through services to Holyhead for connecting ferries to Dublin are operated by Avanti West Coast. Overnight sleeper services to Scotland are provided by the Caledonian Sleeper. London Northwestern Railway provide commuter and regional services to the West Midlands, whilst London Overground provide local suburban services in the London area via the Watford DC Line which runs parallel to the West Coast Main Line as far as Watford Junction. Euston tube station is connected to the main concourse and Euston Square tube station is nearby. King's Cross and St Pancras railway stations are about 800 metres east along Euston Road.

The station is named after Euston Hall in Suffolk, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Grafton, the main landowners in the area during the mid-19th century. It is set back from Euston Square and Euston Road on the London Inner Ring Road, between Cardington Street and Eversholt Street in the London Borough of Camden. It is one of 19 stations managed by Network Rail. As of 2020, it was the seventh-busiest station in Britain It is the sixth-busiest terminus in London by entries and exits. Euston bus station is in front of the main entrance.

Plan and Book:

Euston Station: Brief History

Euston, the first inter-city railway terminal in London, was planned by George and Robert Stephenson. The site was chosen in 1831 by George and Robert Stephenson, engineers of the L&BR. The area was mostly farmland at the edge of the expanding city, and adjacent to the New Road (now Euston Road), which had caused urban development. The plan was to construct a station near the Regent's Canal in Islington to provide a connection for London dock traffic. An alternative site at Marble Arch, proposed by Robert Stephenson, was rejected by a provisional committee, and a proposal to end the line at Maiden Lane was rejected by the House of Lords in 1832. A terminus at Camden Town, announced by Stephenson the following year, received royal assent on 6 May, before an extension was approved in 1834, allowing the line to reach Euston Grove.

It was designed by Philip Hardwick and built by William Cubitt, with a distinctive arch over the station entrance. The station opened as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) on 20 July 1837. The old station building was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with the present building in the international modern style. The first railway hotels in London were built at Euston. Two hotels designed by Hardwick opened in 1839 on either side of the Arch; the Victoria on the west had basic facilities while the Euston on the east was designed for first-class passengers.

Euston was expanded after the L&BR was amalgamated with other companies to form the London and North Western Railway, and the original sheds were replaced by the Great Hall in 1849. Capacity was increased throughout the 19th century from two platforms to fifteen. The station was controversially rebuilt in the mid-1960s when the Arch and the Great Hall were demolished to accommodate the electrified West Coast Main Line, and the revamped station still attracts criticism over its architecture. Euston is to be the London terminus for the planned High Speed 2 railway and the station is being redeveloped to accommodate it.

The station and railway have been owned by the L&BR (1837–1846), the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) (1846–1923), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) (1923–1948), British Railways (1948–1994), Railtrack (1994–2002) and Network Rail (2002–present).

The present station was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 14 October 1968. A long, low structure, it opened with integrated automatic ticket facilities and a range of shops; the first of its kind for any British station. A second development phase by Richard Seifert & Partners began in 1979, adding 37,600 m2 of office space along the station frontage in the form of three low-rise towers overlooking Melton Street and Eversholt Street.

The demolition of the original buildings in 1962 was described by the Royal Institute of British Architects as "one of the greatest acts of Post-War architectural vandalism in Britain" and was approved directly by Harold Macmillan. The attempts made to preserve the earlier building, championed by Sir John Betjeman, led to the formation of the Victorian Society and heralded the modern conservation movement. This movement saved the nearby high Gothic St Pancras station when threatened with demolition in 1966, ultimately leading to its renovation in 2007 as the terminus of HS1 to the Continent.



Euston's 1960s style of architecture has been described as "a dingy, grey, horizontal nothingness" and a reflection of "the tawdry glamour of its time", entirely lacking in "the sense of occasion, of adventure, that the great Victorian termini gave to the traveller". Writing in The Times, Richard Morrison stated that "even by the bleak standards of Sixties architecture, Euston is one of the nastiest concrete boxes in London: devoid of any decorative merit; seemingly concocted to induce maximum angst among passengers; and a blight on surrounding streets. The design should never have left the drawing-board – if, indeed, it was ever on a drawing-board."

In March 2010 the Secretary of State for Transport, Andrew Adonis announced that Euston was the preferred southern terminus of the planned High Speed 2 line, which would connect to a newly built station near Curzon Street and Fazeley Street in Birmingham. The Euston Downside Carriage Maintenance Depot was demolished in 2018 in preparation for the start of tunnelling. The two office towers in front of the station were demolished between January 2019 and December 2020. The third tower at 1 Eversholt Street is not part of these plans. Two hotels on Cardington Street adjacent to the west of the station were also demolished.