Bounds Green tube station is a London Underground station,
located at the junction of Bounds Green Road and Brownlow Road, in North London.
The station is on the Piccadilly Line, between Wood Green and Arnos Grove stations,
and is on the boundary between Travelcard Zone 3 and fare_zone 4.
Like all stations on the Cockfosters extension, Bounds Green station which opened on
19 September 1932, set new aesthetic standards, not previously seen on London's
Underground.
Architecturally, this tube station, designed in the typical "Box-style" of the architect
Charles Holden by his colleague C. H. James, is a well-preserved example of the modernist
house style of London Transport in the 1930s. The octagonal frontage is flanked by a ventilation tower.
Two escalators take passengers from the ticket hall down to the platforms with a central fixed stairway.
These machines were installed in 1989 and 1991, replacing the original 1932 machines.
The construction of "suicide pits" between the rails was also innovative. These were built in connection
with a system of passageways under the platforms to give access to the track.
On the night of 13 October 1940, a lone German aircraft dropped a single bomb on houses to the north
of the station. The destruction of the houses caused the north end of the westbound platform tunnel to
collapse, killing or injuring many people amongst those sheltering from the air raid.
The train service was disrupted for two months. A memorial plaque (at the north end of the westbound
platform) erroneously commemorates "sixteen Belgian refugees and... three British citizens who died" in
the attack. The records of the civilian deaths held by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission indicate
that in fact sixteen people died at the scene - only three of whom were Belgian - with a seventeenth dying
in hospital the following day. Approximately twenty people were injured, but survived.
October 8, 2018