Cockfosters tube station


Cockfosters is a London Underground station on the Piccadilly line, for which it is the northern terminus. The station is located on Cockfosters Road approximately nine miles from central London and serves Cockfosters in the London Borough of Barnet, although it is actually located a short distance across the borough boundary in the neighbouring London Borough of Enfield. The station is in Travelcard Zone 5 and the next station south-east is Oakwood.

History

The station opened on 31 July 1933, the last of the stations on the extension of the line from Finsbury Park to do so and four months after Oakwood station opened. Prior to its opening, Trent Park and Cock Fosters were suggested as alternative station names. The original site hoarding displayed the name as a single word.
The station was designed by Charles Holden in a modern European style using brick, glass and reinforced concrete. Compared with the other new stations Holden designed for the extension, Cockfosters' street buildings are modest in scale, lacking the mass of Oakwood or Arnos Grove or the avant-garde flourish of Southgate. Holden's early design sketches show the station with two towers. The most striking feature of the station is the tall concrete and glass trainshed roof and platform canopies, which are supported by portal frames of narrow blade-like concrete columns and beams rising from the platforms and spanning across the tracks. The trainshed roof constructed at Uxbridge from 1937 to 1938 was built to a similar design. Cockfosters station is a Grade II listed building.
The station has three tracks with platforms numbered 1 to 4, the centre track being served from both sides by platforms 2 and 3. This is an example of the so-called Spanish solution. Most eastbound Piccadilly trains terminate here, although some terminate at Arnos Grove or Oakwood, particularly in peak hours or in the evenings. Some trains may even terminate at Wood Green; however, this is only used very early in the morning or in emergency situations. Cockfosters depot is located between Oakwood and Cockfosters and trains can access or leave it from either direction.

Services

Nearby attractions

Cockfosters tube station features prominently in the novel While England Sleeps by American author David Leavitt. One of the novel's protagonists is writing a book entitled The Train to Cockfosters.
A commercial for Foster's lager shown on UK television in the 1980s features Paul Hogan sitting in an Underground station near to a Japanese man who is looking at the Tube map on the wall. The man asks Hogan, "Can you tell me the way to Cockfosters?", to which Hogan replies, "Drink it warm, mate".

Connections

routes 298, 384 and 299 and night route N91 serve the station.

Gallery