Aldgate tube station

This article is about the underground railway station between Tower Hill and Liverpool Street. For the underground railway station between Aldgate and Whitechapel, see Aldgate East tube station.

Aldgate
Station entrance
Aldgate Location of Aldgate in Central London
Location	Aldgate
Local authority	City of London
Managed by	London Underground
Number of platforms	4
Fare zone	1
OSI	Fenchurch Street
London Underground annual entry and exit
2011	6.24 million
2012	6.65 million
2013	6.88 million
2014	7.22 million
Key dates
18 November 1876 (18 November 1876)	Opened
Other information
Lists of stations	DLR Underground National Rail Tramlink
London Transport portal

Aldgate is a London Underground station located at Aldgate on the eastern edge of the City of London. It is on the Circle line between Tower Hill and Liverpool Street, the eastern terminus of the Metropolitan line and is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Aldgate was opened in 1876 with its entrance on Aldgate High Street. The nearby Aldgate East station opened eight years later and is served by the District and Hammersmith & City lines.

History

The route first proposed ran south from Moorgate to Cannon Street, but this was soon amended to the present alignment to allow connection with three additional termini: Liverpool Street, Broad Street, and Fenchurch Street. However, this change also forced an awkward doubling-back at Aldgate, reducing the desirability of the line for local traffic and greatly increasing the cost of construction due to high prices in the City of London.

The station was opened on 18 November 1876 with a southbound extension to Tower Hill opening on 25 September 1882, completing the Circle (line). Services from Aldgate originally ran further west than they do now, reaching as far as Richmond, and trains also used to run from Aldgate to Hammersmith (the Hammersmith & City line now bypasses the station). It became the terminus of the Metropolitan line in 1941. Before that, Metropolitan trains had continued on to the southern termini of the East London Line.

7 July 2005 bombings

In 2005, one of four bombs used in the 7 July London terrorist attacks was detonated on a C-Stock Circle line train that had departed Liverpool Street and was approaching Aldgate. Seven passengers were killed in the explosion, as well as the suicide bomber. Of the stations affected by the bombings, Aldgate was the first to be reopened, once police had handed back control of the site to London Underground following an extensive search for evidence. Once the damaged tunnel was repaired by Metronet engineers, the lines were reopened. This also allowed the Metropolitan line to be fully restored, since the closure had meant all trains had to be terminated two stations early, at Moorgate.

Services

Circle line

The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:

• 6 tph clockwise to Edgware Road via Embankment
• 6 tph anti-clockwise to Hammersmith via King's Cross St. Pancras

Metropolitan line

The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:

• 2 tph northbound to Amersham
• 2 tph northbound to Chesham
• 8 tph northbound to Uxbridge

During peak hours there are also fast and semi-fast services to Amersham, Chesham, Uxbridge and Watford. Note that there are no semi-fast services to Chesham and semi-fast services to Amersham and Uxbridge are in the morning peaks only. There is also an all-stations service to Watford in the morning peaks only.

Connections

London Bus routes 25, 40, 42, 67, 78, 100, 115, 135, 205 and 254, and night routes N205, N253, N550 and N551 serve the station. Additionally, bus route 25 has a 24-hour bus service.

Literature

Aldgate station plays a role in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (published in the anthology His Last Bow).

In the story, the body of a junior clerk named Cadogan West is found on the tracks outside Aldgate, with a number of stolen plans for the Bruce-Partington submarine in his pocket. It seems clear enough that "the man, dead or alive, either fell or was precipitated from a train." But why, wonders Holmes, did the dead man not have a ticket? It turns out that the body was placed on top of a train carriage before it reached Aldgate, via a window in a house on a cutting overlooking the Metropolitan line. Holmes realises that the body fell off the carriage roof only when the train was jolted by the dense concentration of points at Aldgate.

Aldgate is also mentioned in John Creasy's 1955 detective novel Gideon's Day.

Further reading

Preceding station		London Underground		Following station
Liverpool Street towards Hammersmith (via King's Cross St. Pancras)		Circle line		Tower Hill towards Edgware Road (via Victoria)
Liverpool Street towards Amersham, Chesham, Uxbridge or Watford		Metropolitan line		Terminus