Bank and Monument stations

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Bank and Monument are interlinked London Underground stations, spanning the length of King William Street in the City of London. The stations are officially one station, known operationally as the Bank-Monument complex, although the separate names remain in use on station entrances, platforms and the tube map.

The two parts of the combined station take their names from the nearby Bank of England and the Monument to the Great Fire of London. The complex is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Bank

On the Central Line, the station is between St. Paul's and Liverpool Street. On the Northern Line the station is between London Bridge and Moorgate. Bank is the northern terminus of the Waterloo & City Line, the only other station being the southern terminus at Waterloo station. Bank is the western terminus for the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), the next station being Shadwell.

Monument

On the Circle and District Lines, Monument is between Cannon Street and Tower Hill.

1 History
2 Disaster exercises
3 The future
4 Trivia
5 Transport connections
6 External links

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History

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Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway, 1884

The Metropolitan Railway (MR) and Metropolitan District Railway (MDR) had, by 1876, constructed the majority of the Inner Circle (now the Circle Line), reaching Aldgate and Mansion House respectively. The companies were in dispute over the completion of the route as the MDR was struggling financially and the MR was concerned that completion would effect its revenues through increased competition from the MDR in the City area. City financiers keen to see the line completed, established the Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway in 1874 to link Mansion House to Aldgate. Forced into action, the MR bought-out the company and it and the MDR began construction of the final section of the Inner Circle in 1879.

The station at Monument opened on 6 October 1884. Initially the station was served by trains from both companies as part of circular Inner Circle service but various operational patterns have been used during the station's life. The Inner Circle service achieved a separate identity as the Circle Line in 1949 although its trains were still provided by the District or Metropolitan Lines.

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Waterloo & City Railway, 1898

The Waterloo & City Railway was constructed by the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) as a link between its terminus at Waterloo and the City. The station, with platforms under Queen Victoria Street and close to Mansion House, opened on 8 August 1898. The station was originally called City.

The slopes to the platforms were later provided with one of the few sets of moving walkways on the whole underground system, unusually inclined at a slight angle. Advertising at the Waterloo & City station often takes the form of large painted murals on the walls and ceilings of the sloped exits, forming one of the largest advertisements on the underground.

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City & South London Railway, 1900

The first station to be known as Bank opened on 25 February 1900 when the City & South London Railway (C&SLR, now part of the Northern Line) opened its extension from Borough to Moorgate. The earlier terminus of the line, King William Street, on a different tunnel alignment was closed at the same time.

The intended location for a station building was the site of the 18th century church of St Mary Woolnoth on the corner of Lombard Street, which the C&SLR had obtained permission to demolish. Public protest made the company change its plans to building only a sub-surface ticket hall and lift entrance in the crypt of the church. This necessitated moving the bodies elsewhere, strenghtening the crypt with a steel framework and underpinning the church's foundations. Unusually for stations subsequently converted to escalators, the original lift access from the ticket hall is still in use.

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Central London Railway, 1900

The opening of the eastern terminus of the Central London Railway (CLR, now the Central Line) followed on 30 July 1900.

As with the C&SLR, the high cost of property in the City, coupled with the presence of the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, and Mansion House, meant that the station had to be built entirely underground. Permission was granted by the Corporation of London for the station to be sited beneath the busy junction of roads meeting at this point provided public subways were proved to act as pedestrian road crossings. To avoid undermining the road above, the station's lifts were installed in separate lift shafts rather than paired two-per-shaft as usual.

To avoid compensating property owners for vibrations during construction and from operation, the alignments of the CLR's tunnels were arranged directly under London's streets. This meant that the platforms directly under Threadneedle Street and Poultry have an extreme curve to them, so that on the westbound platform it is not possible to see one end of the platform from the other.

The proximity of the CLR, W&CR and C&SLR stations, and the non-competing directions that their services travelled in, meant that it was only a short time before the ticket halls were connected. At deep level, connection between the CLR and C&SLR platforms had to wait until the introduction of escalators into the station in the 1920s.

On 11 January 1941 during World War II the Central Line ticket hall suffered a direct hit from a German bomb. The roadway collapsed into the subways and station concourse, killing 56 people.

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Monument link, 1933

The southern end of the C&SLR (by then part of the Edgware-Highgate Morden Line) platforms was close to those of Monument station, and in 1933, an escalator was built to provide the connection. At this point the names of the two stations became Bank-for-Monument and Monument-for-Bank.

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Docklands Light Railway, 1991

The Docklands Light Railway built a tunneled extension to arrive at platforms parallel to (but deeper than) the Northern Line platforms, opened in 1991. The DLR platforms also provided a corridor between them, and connected it to the Central line at one end, eventually reaching the platforms via the base of the disused lift shafts. Monument was connected at the other, to an extension to the westbound platform, meaning that there was no longer the requirement to pass down the busy Northern line platforms in order to change lines. In addition, a new link was provided to the Waterloo and City lines from the concourse to the Central Line. The complexity this gave to the station has lead to it gaining the unofficial name "The Worm" amongst staff.

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Disaster exercises

On Sunday September 7, 2003 Bank station was used for a disaster training exercise, billed as "the most realistic live disaster exercise of its kind". The event, lasting several hours and involving about 500 police, fire, ambulance and London Underground personnel, was intended to prepare the emergency services for mass decontamination in the event of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack.

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The future

The original Central London Railway station had straight-to-platform lifts, but with the introduction of escalators cutting through the shafts, such access for the mobility impaired was lost. The only fully accessible part of the station for the mobility impaired are the DLR platforms, via lifts from the Street (again using part of St. Mary Woolnoth - the rectory). In addition to accessibility problems, Bank is one of the most congested stations at peak times on the whole of the Underground. In consequence, Transport for London have committed themselves to significantly transforming the station and removing some of the bottlenecks, and rendering the level of mobility impaired access much higher.

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Trivia

London's first public toilet was located close to the Royal Exchange exit of Bank station.
The Bank of England exit of the station is built into the Bank itself, and is the only grade I listed building on the Underground network.
Bank DLR is the only air-conditioned platform on the underground network.

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