The Tube map could have been even more expansive if the plans had gone ahead
London’s Underground network boasts an impressive 272 stations, spanning 11 lines and covering 402km of track — yet it could have been bigger.
An ambitious extension to the Northern line, proposed back in the 1930s, would have added three further stations to its Mill Hill East branch, though the plans ultimately never came to fruition.
Despite a train line already existing beyond Mill Hill East as part of the Great Northern Railway at the time, the expansion never got off the ground. So, which are North London’s three lost Tube stations?
The proposed branch would have stretched from Mill Hill East, calling at the old Mill Hill station, before continuing through Edgware station and onto three brand-new stops.
These would have been Brockley Hill, Elstree South, and Bushey Heath, which was earmarked to serve as the new Northern line terminus. Known as the ‘Northern heights line’, it would have created a vital link between the two branches of the Northern line, extending it further northwest beyond Edgware.
The scheme had progressed so far that evidence of it remains visible to this day — a tunnel continues beyond the end of Edgware station, while at the planned site of Brockley Hill station, half-built arches that would have supported the elevated platform can still be found, along with an abandoned bus stop lay-by.
With so much tunnelling and infrastructure already constructed or under way, it would have taken something truly extraordinary to bring the project to a standstill — and that is precisely what the Second World War did.
Post-war green belt laws effectively made the planned stations obsolete by preventing residential development in the surrounding areas, ultimately leading to the project being formally scrapped in 1954.
The sole surviving relic is the partially constructed Brockley Hill station, which was partly torn down shortly afterwards, leaving only the remains of the viaduct still visible to this day.
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