Oxford Circus is a London Underground station serving
Oxford Circus at the junction of Regent Street and Oxford Street, with
entrances on all four corners of the intersection. The station is an
interchange between the Central, Victoria and Bakerloo lines. It is the
fourth busiest station on the network and the busiest without connection to
the National Rail service.
On the Central line it is between Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road, on
the Bakerloo line it is between Regent's Park and Piccadilly Circus, and on
the Victoria line it is between Green Park and Warren Street. It is in
Travelcard Zone 1.
The station opened on the Central London Railway on 30 July 1900, with the
Baker Street and Waterloo Railway's platforms opening on 10 March 1906. The
two companies had separate surface buildings and lift shafts. The station
buildings, which remain today as exits from the station, were constructed on
very confined plots on either side of Argyll Street on the south side of
Oxford Street, just to the east of the circus itself. The stations were
originally built as entirely separate, but connecting passages were swiftly
provided at platform level. The surviving Central London Railway building to
the east of Argyll Street is the best surviving example of the stations
designed by Harry Bell Measures, and the Bakerloo line building to the west
is a classic Leslie Green structure. Both station buildings are Grade II
listed.
Almost from the outset, overcrowding has been a constant problem at the
station and it has seen numerous improvements to its facilities and
below-ground arrangements to deal with this difficulty. After much
discussion between the then two separate operators, a major reconstruction
began in 1912. This saw a new ticket hall, dealing with both lines, built in
the basement of the Bakerloo station, the Bakerloo lifts removed, and new
deep-level escalators opened down to the Bakerloo line level. Access to the
Central line was by way of existing deep-level subways. The new works came
into use on 9 May 1914 with the CLR lifts still available for passengers. By
1923 even this rearrangement was unable to cope, so a second rebuilding
commenced. This saw a second set of escalators built directly down to the
Central line, the CLR station building becoming an exit only. Then, on 2
October 1928, a third escalator leading to the Bakerloo platforms was
opened. Unusually, lifts came back into prominence at an Underground station
when, in 1942, a set of high-speed lifts came into use, largely used as an
exit route from the Central line platforms directly to the Argyll Street
exit building.
The Victoria line opened on 7 March 1969. To handle the additional passenger
loads, a new ticket hall was constructed directly under the road junction.
To excavate the new ticket hall below the roadway, traffic was diverted for
five years (August 1963 to Easter 1968) on to a temporary bridge-like
structure known as the "umbrella" covering the Regent Street/Oxford Street
intersection. Services tunnels were constructed to carry water mains and
telecom cables past the new ticket hall. Construction of the Victoria line
station tunnels with their platforms, the new escalator shafts and the
linking passages to the Central line platforms was carried out from access
shafts sunk from nearby Cavendish Square, Upper Regent Street and Argyll
Street. To this day, traffic passing through the Oxford Circus intersection
literally travels over the roof of the ticket office.
Cross-platform interchange between the Bakerloo and Victoria lines was
provided by constructing the Victoria line platforms parallel to the
Bakerloo line ones. With the additional escalators in place, a new one-way
circulation scheme was introduced and the remaining lifts were removed.
In 1984, during renovation works, the station suffered a severe fire which
burned out one of the platforms. It is believed that the fire was caused by
smoking materials being pushed through a ventilation grille into a storeroom
where they set several materials on fire. The incident led to a smoking ban
being introduced on trains.
In 2007 the station underwent a major modernisation, removing the murals
installed on the Central and Bakerloo line platforms in the 1980s and
replacing them with plain white tiles, in a style similar to those when the
station opened in 1900. One 1980s mural remains on the platforms for
posterity. The work has also seen a restoration of the original Hans
Unger-designed motifs on the Victoria line platforms. Major escalator
refurbishment took place in 2010–11.
Although there will be no direct interchange with Crossrail, the eastern
Crossrail ticket hall of Bond Street station will be on Hanover Square,
which is a two-minute walk away from Oxford Circus station. This is to
decrease the congestion at the already busy Oxford Circus station, and to
encourage more people to travel to Bond Street or Tottenham Court Road than
Oxford Circus.