Platforms at Crouch End were rebuilt for Tube trains before the war halted work in 1939. The line closed to passengers in 1954.
Crouch End has no Tube station today, but in the 1930s a plan to turn its branch railway into part of the Northern line got as far as rebuilding the platforms. The work was never finished, and the old route is now the Parkland Walk, London’s longest nature reserve.
Crouch End got its station in 1867, when the Great Northern Railway built one beside Crouch End Hill, on the eastern side. By 1935 steam trains were still running through it between Alexandra Palace and Finsbury Park.
In the 1930s the London Passenger Transport Board drew up its ‘new works’ plan, which would have made the branch an extension of the Northern line. Trains would have called at Finsbury Park, Stroud Green, Crouch End, Highgate, Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill and Alexandra Palace, with a new link at Finsbury Park taking electric trains on past Highbury and Islington into central London.
Electrification work started, and at Crouch End the platforms were partly rebuilt in brick and concrete to a height that suited both main line and Underground trains. The outbreak of the Second World War stopped the work in 1939, and it never resumed, even though Tube maps marked the branch as “under construction” until 1950.
Services on the line dwindled, run with elderly Victorian trains, and in 1953 it was decided there were too few passengers to justify electrifying it. Crouch End station closed to passengers in 1954. The track was later taken up and the station buildings and stairs knocked down, though the platforms are still there.
Haringey Council had taken on the Cranley Gardens to Alexandra Park stretch as a ‘Parkland Walk’ by 1976. The Finsbury Park to Highgate section followed a few years on, when it was resurfaced and access to the old line was improved. The whole route had its official opening in 1984.
Walkers and cyclists now share its 3.9 miles, and since the 1990s they have passed Marilyn Collins’ Spriggan sculpture along the way. Crouch End itself regularly comes near the top of polls of London’s best neighbourhoods, still without a Tube station of its own.
A 1930s plan to turn its branch railway into a Northern line extension was halted in 1939 by the Second World War and never restarted. The line closed to passengers in 1954.
It is 3.9 miles long, used by walkers and cyclists, and is London's longest nature reserve.
Its official opening was in 1984. Haringey Council had taken on the Cranley Gardens to Alexandra Park section by 1976.
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