In praise of Cockfosters Tube station.
"Excuse me sir, can you tell me the way to Cockfosters?". So began this memorable, Tube-based lager commercial from the 1980s:
Paul Hogan's punchline, "Yeah, drink it warm, mate," isn't quite the sordid rejoinder I was hoping for. Still, the advert is making me nostalgic for the days when you could openly sip intoxicating liquids beside 630 volts of direct current.
I first found my way to Cockfosters — without any help from Australians or their beer — back in the mid-1990s. Indeed, Cockfosters was the very first Tube station I ever visited as an adult. That must put me in a very niche club.
Anyhow. I'd motored down the A1 from my small northern town, intent on reaching a technology show at Earl's Court. I couldn't face the traffic of central London, just months after passing my driving test. The solution was to park up at Cockfosters — one junction from the A1 — and let the Piccadilly line do the rest.
It worked a charm. Cockfosters had no parking restrictions, in common with most places back then, so I simply left the car near the shops and descended into another world.
Cockfosters Tube station was unlike any building I'd seen up to that point. Its sloping, reinforced concrete walls give the appearance of a futuristic aircraft hangar — appropriate, given that its tracks lead eventually to Heathrow. My memories are now vague, but I do recall a feeling of otherworldliness on entering the station. They don't build like this in Grimsby.
I've since learned that the station was designed by the great Charles Holden. It's obvious from the long-and-low surface buildings, which have his slick, bricky fingerprints all over them, albeit on a scale that is modest compared to his other Piccadilly line masterworks.
The ticket hall and platforms are something else entirely, however. The brute strength of reinforced concrete interlaced with delicate window panels is quite the contrast. I was taken aback in the 1990s, so can only wonder at how it was received in 1933 when the station first opened.
The unusual design looks most attractive from the ticket gate-line, but is best understood from the far end of the platforms. Here, the structure is revealed as a large, central train-shed, with two lower flanking wings. Each of the three sections is served by one set of tracks. Trains in the central section can be selectively accessed from either side, in a configuration I now learn is called 'the Spanish solution'. This raises its own questions, but is quicker than saying "a bit like trains at Canary Wharf DLR".
Holden would reprise this design at another terminus five years later. Uxbridge, also on the Piccadilly along with the Met line, boasts a similar concrete canopy, with 'Spanish solution' platform layout. Both stations now have Grade II-listed status, reflecting their unusual design.
The surface buildings are modest in comparison, but still a joy. All three sections are single-storey brown brick affairs. Besides the main entrance, a smaller portal can be found around the side, along with a similarly styled bus shelter building (with underpass) across the road.
About that name
The origins of the name 'Cockfosters' are a little uncertain. It possibly recalls the home of a cock-forester, where 'cock' here means 'chief'. Alternatively, it might be a corruption of a family name like, I don't know, Coquefostre, or Kochfosser, or Cackfister or something.
Few Londoners had heard of the then-village before the Tube station arrived in 1933. At that time, its name was considered a novelty, and remarked upon in the press:
"The name is very poetry in our ears". I'm not sure that's quite the sentiment today, when Cockfosters finds itself in the same smirk-inducing single-entendre club as the toilet magnate Thomas Crapper and the planet Uranus. Still, that's got to be a step up from being the punchline of a Foster's commercial. And at least it's not Mudchute.
All images: Matt Brown
