Things you may already know about Stanmore station:
- it's at the very end of the Jubilee line, north London
- it's in Zone 5
- it's one stop after Canons Park
Things you may not know about Stanmore station:
- it is connected to Bletchley Park, the place where the World War Two German Enigma code was cracked and is currently in not very good condition. 57 Turing Bombe machines were housed at Stanmmore and were part of the brainy effort to break the enigmatic Enigma
- the station is currently hosting a new Art on the Underground commission The Answer Lies at the End of the Line
, a crossword themed new art work by artist Serena Korda
The brainy chaps picked for cracking Enigma were tested rigorously for problem-solving abilities and completing The Times crossword in under 12 minutes was one of the ways to prove intellectual capability. And that's completing it with the correct answers, not just randomly filling in letters until the grid is full. So the fetching black and white squares decorating the station are a reflection on that aspect of the history of the area, and also of the crosswords London Transport printed on the back of information leaflets that were given to thousands of Londoners sheltering the Underground system during the Blitz.
If you're up for a bit of cryptic clue solving and hanging around waiting for that Jubilee line train to start, you'll find that each crossword reveals a bit about a local group, be it the Stanmore Bowls Club, Stanmore Choral Society, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital or the infamous Duke of Chandos. All crosswords were compiled with the help of local groups so it's truly a local effort for local people, by local people.
The Answer Lies at the End of the Line, Stanmore Station until 30 January 2009. For more information and downloadable crosswords, go to The Answer Lies at the End of the Line
website. Also check out Art On The Underground at Stratford Station.
Image courtesy of Andy Wilkes from the Londonist Flickr pool.
