Clerkenwell was an authorised underground railway station planned by the

Metropolitan Railway The Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met) was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933, its main line heading north-west from the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the Middlesex su ...

but never built. It was to be located on

Farringdon Road Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, London. Route Farringdon Road is part of the A201 route connecting King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. It goes southeast from King's Cross, crossing Rosebery Avenue, then turns south, crossing C ...

at Mount Pleasant in

Clerkenwell Clerkenwell () is an area of central London, England. Clerkenwell was an ancient parish from the mediaeval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington. The well after which it was named was redisco ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

History

The Metropolitan Railway (MR, now the

Metropolitan line The Metropolitan line, colloquially known as the Met, is a London Underground line between in the City of London and and in Buckinghamshire, with branches to in Hertfordshire and in Hillingdon. Printed in magenta on the tube map, the line i ...

) opened in 1863 between

Paddington Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddi ...

and Farringdon as the world's first underground railway line. The railway was mostly constructed using

cut and cover A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A Pipeline transport, pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used ...

techniques under existing roads, though the section through Clerkenwell under Mount Pleasant hill was constructed using traditional tunnelling methods because of the depth of the tracks beneath the surface. Because of the depth, and the lack of development in the immediate area (until the 1880s the hill was the site of

Coldbath Fields Prison Coldbath Fields Prison, also formerly known as the Middlesex House of Correction and Clerkenwell Gaol and informally known as the Steel, was a prison in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell, London. Founded in the reign of James I (1603–1625 ...

), no station was constructed at Clerkenwell, leaving a greater distance between King's Cross (since replaced by King's Cross St Pancras further to the west) and Farringdon stations than between others on the railway. In November 1910, the MR submitted a

private bill Proposed bills are often categorized into public bills and private bills. A public bill is a proposed law which would apply to everyone within its jurisdiction. This is unlike a private bill which is a proposal for a law affecting only a single p ...

to parliament that included plans to construct a new station at Mount Pleasant. The station would have been below ground. Parliamentary approval for the station was granted in the ''Metropolitan Railway Act 1911''; however, the powers were not used and they lapsed in 1932.

References

Bibliography

* Unbuilt London Underground stations Proposed London Underground stations {{London-transport-stub