Farringdon Station – Where the Underground Began
Farringdon Station on Cowcross Street in London is the birthplace of the world's first underground passenger railway, which welcomed its first train on January 10, 1863. Championed by Charles Pearson, the line carried 38,000 passengers on opening day in gas-lit wooden carriages. Architect Charles Walter Clark rebuilt the entrance in 1922, and the station originally doubled as a freight hub delivering livestock directly to nearby Smithfield Market.
London · from the walk “Clerkenwell Uncovered: From the World's First Tube to London's Radical Heart” · audio ~3 min · Generated
Farringdon Station, Cowcross Street, London EC1A 7BN
- On opening day, January 10, 1863, 38,000 passengers rode the world's first underground train line at Farringdon Station.
- City Solicitor Charles Pearson championed the underground railway starting in 1845, but died four months before Farringdon Station opened.
- Architect Charles Walter Clark rebuilt the entrance of Farringdon Station in 1922 under the name Farringdon and High Holborn.
- Farringdon Station originally featured underground cattle ramps to deliver livestock directly to slaughterhouses at nearby Smithfield Market.
Why was Farringdon Station in London built with underground cattle ramps?
You are standing at the birthplace of the world's underground railway revolution. This is Farringdon Station, Cowcross Street... and on the tenth of January, eighteen sixty-three, the very first underground passenger train arrived right here.......... Think about that. Thirty-eight Thousand people rode the line on its opening day alone! Gas-lit wooden carriages, hauled by belching steam locomotives, rumbling through tunnels beneath the streets of London. The Times called it "the great engineering triumph of the day."
...... But here's what most people don't know. The man who made it all possible... never got to see it. Charles Pearson, Solicitor to the City of London, had been championing this wild idea since eighteen forty-five. He called it "trains in drains." For nearly Twenty years, he fought sceptics, raised funds, and navigated parliament. He even brokered a clever deal where the City bought one hundred seventy-nine thousand pounds worth of land for the railway, while the railway company purchased two hundred thousand pounds in City shares. But Pearson died of dropsy on the fourteenth of September, eighteen sixty-two... just four months before his dream came to life.......... The night before the public opening, the station was transformed into a nine-hundred-foot-long banquet hall, where some six hundred guests feasted in celebration. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston... declined his invitation. His excuse? At seventy-nine years old, he said he preferred to stay Above ground as long as he could.......... Now, look up at the façade above you. You can still read the old name carved in stone: "Farringdon and High Holborn." That's from nineteen twenty-two, when the architect Charles Walter Clark rebuilt this entrance. The station has actually had Three different names. It started as Farringdon Street in eighteen sixty-three, became Farringdon and High Holborn in nineteen twenty-two, and finally just Farringdon in nineteen thirty-six.......... And here's one more secret. This station wasn't just built for people. It was built in conjunction with a freight depot to deliver Livestock directly to the slaughterhouses supplying Smithfield Market, just to the south-east. Cattle were transported underground by rail and walked up ramps to meet their fate. You can still find remains of those cattle ramps on West Smithfield, if you know where to look.......... From carrying cattle to carrying Crossrail passengers ninety feet underground... Farringdon has been reinventing itself for over a hundred and sixty years. And it all started right beneath your feet.