to cross the
River Thames. The station was planned as the London terminus of the
South Eastern Railway (SER). They had wanted to extend the line from
Bricklayers Arms towards Hungerford Bridge, but a bill presented in 1846 was unsuccessful. In 1857, they proposed to Parliament that they would build a railway terminus in the
West End, hoping to use
Victoria, before reaching an agreement with the
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway to build a line west from . Later in the year, the secretary Samuel Smiles looked for potential routes and decided the best location would be on the site of the former
Hungerford Market adjacent to
The Strand, and that the line should be directly connected to
Waterloo, allowing a link with
London and South Western Railway services. The '
was formed by the ' (
22 & 23 Vict. c. lxxxi) in order to build the extension, and the paid £300,000 (now £) in capital to help build this. The line towards Charing Cross was expensive to build as it traversed a heavily built-up area, which was exacerbated in 1862 when the company chose to upgrade the two running lines to three, and doubled the capacity over the bridge to four tracks. The bridge replaced the original suspension bridge designed by
Isambard Kingdom Brunel which opened in 1845. Work began in June 1860 and took around three years. The old suspension bridge remained open until the new
Hungerford Bridge was suitable to carry foot traffic. A trial run over the new line took place on 1 December 1863. is in front of the Charing Cross Hotel. The station was designed by Sir
John Hawkshaw, and featured a single span
wrought iron roof, long and wide, arching over the six platforms on its relatively cramped site. It was built on a brick arched viaduct, the level of the rails above the ground varying up to . The space underneath the line was used as
wine cellars. The roof above the tracks is a single wide great arch, rising to at its highest point. The station was built by
Lucas Brothers. Charing Cross station opened on 11 January 1864. The Charing Cross Railway was absorbed into the on 1 September, shortly after the station opened. The '''''', designed by
Edward Middleton Barry, and built by
Lucas Brothers, opened on 15 May 1865 and gave the station an ornate frontage in the French Renaissance style. It had 250 bedrooms spread over seven floors and extended along
Villiers Street as well as the front of the Strand. The public rooms had balconies overlooking the main station concourse. It quickly became popular and was profitable, leading to a 90-bedroom annexe on the other side of Villiers Street opening in 1878. A bridge over the street connected the two parts of the hotel together. In 1887, Hungerford Bridge was widened to in order to provide three more tracks into the station. On 1 January 1899, the merged with the
London, Chatham and Dover Railway to form the
South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR), which took over operations at Charing Cross.
Eleanor Cross in
Charing Cross station forecourt Contemporary with the Charing Cross Hotel was a replica of the
Eleanor Cross in Red
Mansfield stone, also designed by
Edward Middleton Barry, that was erected in the station forecourt. It was based on the original Whitehall Cross built in 1291, that had been demolished in 1647 by order of Parliament. Distances in London are officially measured from the original site of the cross, now the
statue of Charles I facing
Whitehall, and not from this replica. The cross deteriorated over time until it was in such a vulnerable condition that it was placed on
English Heritage's "Heritage At Risk Register" in 2008. A ten-month project to repair and restore the cross was completed in August 2010. This work included recreating and attaching almost 100 missing ornamental features including heraldic shields, an angel, pinnacles, crockets and finials; securing weak or fractured masonry with stainless steel pins and rods and re-attaching decorative items which had previously been removed after becoming loose.
International services After opening, Charing Cross became the main terminus of all services instead of London Bridge, including
boat trains to Continental Europe. Along with Victoria, it became the main departure point from London to abroad, and was called "the Gates of the World" by
Percy Fitzgerald.
Thomas Cook established a travel office on the corner of the station forecourt. The route became the shortest from London to Dover after a diversion at Sevenoaks was built in 1868, and by 1913 it was possible to travel from Charing Cross to Paris in six and a half hours. Owing to its international connections, Charing Cross played an important part in
World War I as the main departure point for both the military and government towards the
Western Front. All civilian and public boat services were suspended on 3 August 1914. Return journeys from Dover carried the sick and wounded towards Charing Cross and hence to hospitals around the country. Over the course of the war, 283 journeys departed from the station. On 26 December 1918, shortly after the war, the US President
Woodrow Wilson met
King George V at Charing Cross. Commercial cross-Channel services resumed to
Ostend on 18 January 1919,
Boulogne on 3 February and
Calais on 8 January 1920, but by this time, Victoria had been expanded to accommodate the strict wartime immigration and customs checks, and Charing Cross ceased to be important as an international terminal.
1905 roof collapse A length of the original roof structure, comprising the two end bays at the south of the station, and part of the western wall collapsed at 3:57 p.m. on 5 December 1905. A gang of men were employed at the time in repairing, glazing and painting the section of roof which fell. Shortly after 3:45 p.m, the roof emitted a loud noise, which was when someone noticed that one of the main tie rods had broken and was hanging down. Part of the roof began to sag and the western wall began to crack. It was another 12 minutes before the collapse occurred, which enabled trains and platforms to be evacuated and incoming trains to be held back. The roof, girders and debris fell across four passenger trains, blocking all tracks. The part of the western wall that fell had crashed through the wall and roof of the neighbouring Royal Avenue Theatre (now the
Playhouse Theatre) in
Northumberland Avenue, which was being reconstructed at the time. Six people died (two workmen on the roof, a
W.H. Smith bookstall vendor and three workmen on the Royal Avenue Theatre site). At the Board Of Trade Inquiry into the accident, expert witnesses expressed doubts about the design of the roof, even though the cause of the failure was attributed to a faulty weld in a tie rod. Though the SECR believed the roof had a lifespan of at least forty more years, they decided not to repair it but to replace it entirely. A travelling timber gantry had to be constructed to take the remainder of the station roof down safely. The replacement was a utilitarian post and girder structure supporting a ridge and furrow roof. The curve of the original roof design can still be seen on the interior brickwork. The station was partially re-opened on 19 March 1906. The old booking offices were demolished and the various rooms on the ground floor were rearranged. A new booking hall was constructed, along with a separate ladies' waiting-room. The additional remedial work was completed in 1913.
Proposed closure and relocation By the late 19th century, Charing Cross was seen as being inconveniently placed. In 1889, the newly formed
London County Council's
John Burns proposed that the station and its approach should be demolished, with a road bridge put in place. The idea gained support within the council as it would allow the Strand to be widened and put a road crossing over the Thames that could bypass Whitehall. When the SECR went to Parliament asking for an act to strengthen the bridge in 1916, Burns suggested the station was in the wrong place and should be rebuilt on the south side of the Thames. The following year, an act was passed to reconstruct the bridge, with strict conditions about its appearance and a ban on enlarging the station building itself. Ownership of Charing Cross passed to the
Southern Railway (SR) in 1923 following the
Big Four grouping. The line was
electrified in 1926 to cater for suburban services. The lighter load of multiple-unit electric trains was found to put far less strain on the bridge, and so traffic was redesigned so that local services ran on the older section, with mainline services using the 1887 extension. In 1926, the Royal Commission on Cross River Traffic proposed that Hungerford Bridge should be replaced by a double deck road / rail bridge, and a new Charing Cross station built to the east of the old one. The SR approved the idea as it would allow them to expand the station. Two years later, a proposal appeared again to build just a road bridge and relocate the station south of the Thames, as it was significantly cheaper. The Prime Minister
Stanley Baldwin urged the SR to accept the proposal, as "a matter of national importance", but the bill failed in 1930 after the
select committee did not accept building a new Charing Cross on the south bank. The proposal was formally rejected in 1936 by the London & Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, which revived the double-deck bridge option. The plans were all abandoned following the outbreak of
World War II.
World War II Charing Cross sustained substantial damage in air-raids during the war. On 8 October 1940, a train was hit during a daylight raid on Whitehall. On the evening of 16/17 April 1941, the hotel was damaged by fire and explosives, four trains caught fire and there were several fires on the bridge. A
parachute mine landed next to platform 4. The station was closed to repair the damage and defuse the mine. A further raid took place on the night of 10/11 May, leading to the station's closure again. On 18 June 1944, a bomb took out a span of the bridge. Normal operation did not resume until 4 December. Following the war, the hotel received extensive repairs in 1951. This consisted of a whole new set of top floors, while the
mansard roof of the upper floors of the hotel was rebuilt in a plain neo-Georgian white brick.
Modernisation The booking hall and ticket offices were modernised in 1974. Electronic ticket printing was first trialled at the station in 1983. In 1986, redevelopment began over most of the area above the platforms. The new buildings were named Embankment Place, a
postmodern office and shopping complex designed by
Terry Farrell and Partners. This development led to the replacement of almost the whole of the 1906 roof. The rear two spans of this structure – immediately adjacent to the existing concourse roof – were retained as part of an enlarged waiting area. In addition the original retaining side walls of the station which once supported it remain in near complete condition. The works were completed in November 1990. Most of the Embankment Place complex is office space, with a selection of restaurants on the ground floor. == Services ==