Hounslow West is a London Underground station in Hounslow in West London. The station is on the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly line, between Hatton Cross and Hounslow Central stations, and is located on Bath Road (A3006) about 600m from its junction with A4 Great West Road and Great South West Road (A30). It is in Travelcard Zone 5. It has an island platform reached by stairs. There is step-free access for wheelchair users only.
The station was opened by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now the District line) on 21 July 1884.[5] The station was originally named Hounslow Barracks in reference to the Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow south of the station on Beavers Lane. The station was the terminus of a single track branch line extension from the MDR's existing route to Hounslow Town station (now closed) on Hounslow High Street.
The branch line diverged from the main route about 300m east of Hounslow East station, although Hounslow East was not opened until later, and when the branch opened there were no intermediate stations between Hounslow Barracks and Osterley & Spring Grove (now Osterley).
In My Early Life, Winston Churchill recalls travelling on the Underground Railway to Hounslow Barracks two or three times a week whilst living at his mother's house in Knightsbridge around 1896.
The MDR's tracks were electrified between 1903 and 1905 with electric trains replacing steam trains on the Hounslow branch from 13 June 1905. On 1 December 1925 Hounslow West, Hounslow Central and Hounslow East stations received their current names.
During 1930 and 1931 a new station building was constructed facing on to Bath Road to replace the original building which was parallel with the tracks and set back at an angle from the road. The new building, by the Underground's architect Stanley Heaps in conjunction with Charles Holden in a style reminiscent of Holden's designs for the 1926 Morden extension of the City and South London Railway (now part of the Northern line), was constructed in Portland stone and features a tall heptagonal ticket hall with glazed screens to all sides. The original building was gradually demolished as the new one was built and the new building opened on 5 July 1931. The building is very similar to the reconstructed station at Ealing Common built at the same time, also by Heaps and Holden. Basil Ionides designed the interior of the ticket hall at Hounslow West tube station.
Piccadilly line services, which had been running as far as Northfields since January 1933, were extended to Hounslow West on 13 March 1933. From that date, the branch was operated jointly by both lines, but District line services (which had more capacious higher carriages) were progressively reduced to just rush-hour services in the late 1950s and withdrawn on 9 October 1964.
In the early 1970s work began on extending the Piccadilly line from Hounslow West to Heathrow Airport. The original alignment of the tracks and platforms at Hounslow West was SW/NE. If the tracks had been extended directly on that alignment towards the airport, much of residential west Hounslow would have had to be demolished. Instead, a route needing little demolition was found by following the Bath Road and Great South West Road in a cut and cover tunnel in a trench alongside the road which passed the Traveller's Friend junction around 1971. The line surfaces briefly over the River Crane before descending under Heathrow. Because most of the tunnelling was by cut and cover, the tunnels could have been made large enough for the bigger District line type carriages with minimum extra work but this did not happen. Extending the District line to Hounslow West again is still a possibility which has recently been re-evaluated. The first phase of the extension works was to build two new platforms at Hounslow West in a covered trench with a more westerly alignment to reach the chosen route. The new platforms were adjacent to and to the north of the existing three platforms, and the access from the 1930s station building was extended to reach them. The new platforms were brought into use on 14 July 1975 and the line was opened as far as Hatton Cross five days later on 19 July 1975.
London Buses Routes 81, 222, 203, 482, H32, H98, H91 and Night Route N9 serve the station.