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| Entrance from the main concourse at Liverpool |
Local authority: City of London
Managed by: Network Rail
Station code: LST
Number of platforms: 18
Liverpool Street station
Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London. It is the terminus of two main lines: the West Anglia Main Line to Cambridge and the busier Great Eastern Main
Line to Norwich. There are also many local commuter services to parts of east London, Essex, and Hertfordshire. In addition, Liverpool Street is the terminus of the Stansted Express, a fast link to London Stansted Airport.
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| Main station concourse |
It was opened in 1874 as a replacement for Bishopsgate station, which was subsequently converted into a freight terminus. In 1917 Liverpool Street was the first site in London to be hit by enemy bomber aircraft in the First World War and in the build-up to the Second World War it served as the terminus for thousands of child refugees arriving in London as part of the Kindertransport rescue mission. The station underwent extensive improvements and modernisation between 1985 and 1992; Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the modified station in December 1991. It sustained minor damage in the Bishopsgate bombing of 1993 and during the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks seven passengers were killed when a bomb exploded aboard an Underground train after it departed Liverpool Street.
With over 57 million passenger entries and exits in 2011-12, Liverpool Street is one of the busiest railway stations in the United Kingdom and is the third-busiest in London after Waterloo and Victoria. It is one of 17 stations in the UK directly managed by Network Rail.
History of Liverpool Street station:
Liverpool Street station was opened on 2 February 1874 by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) on the site of the original Bethlem Royal Hospital, the world's oldest psychiatric hospital which was widely known as 'Bedlam'. Ten platforms were fully operational by 1 November 1875; from this date the original City terminal at Bishopsgate station closed to passengers. Bishopsgate reopened as a goods station in 1881 but was destroyed by a spectacular fire on 5 December 1964. The London Fire Brigade mobilised 40 fire engines, 12 turntable ladder platforms and over 200 firefighters to the incident but were unable to save the depot; two customs officials were killed in the blaze which caused millions of pounds of damage and destroyed hundreds of rail wagons. The Bishopsgate site remained derelict for nearly 40 years until it was redeveloped as Shoreditch High Street, part of the extension of London Underground's East London line to form part of the London Overground network.
The new station at Liverpool Street was designed by GER's chief engineer Edward Wilson and was built by John Mowlem & Co on a site which had been occupied by Bethlem Royal Hospital from the 13th to 17th centuries. A City of London Corporation plaque commemorating the station's construction hangs on the wall of the adjoining former Great Eastern Hotel, rebranded as Andaz Liverpool Street in 2008, which was designed by Charles Barry, Jr. (son of Sir Charles Barry) and his brother Edward Middleton Barry, and also built by Mowlem. The station was named after the street on which it stands, which in turn was named in honour of Lord Liverpool, prime minister from 1812 to 1827, having been built as part of an extension of the City towards the end of his term in office.
The construction of the station was driven by the desire of the company to have a terminal closer to the City than the one opened by its predecessor Eastern Counties Railway at Shoreditch, on 1 July 1840. This station was renamed Bishopsgate in 1846. The construction proved extremely expensive due to the cost of acquiring property and many people were displaced due to the large scale demolitions. The desire to link the Eastern lines to those of the sub-surface Metropolitan Railway, a link seldom used and soon abandoned, also meant that the GER's lines had to drop down to below ground-level from the existing viaducts east of Bishopsgate. This means that there are considerable gradients leading out of the station. Lord Salisbury, who was chairman of Great Eastern in 1870, described the Liverpool Street extension as "one of the greatest mistakes ever committed in connection with a railway." By 1894, an additional eight platforms had been constructed beneath a new roof of simpler design compared to the station's original.....Wikipedia >>
