1 To 8 Station Parade, Including Eight Lamp Posts To East And West

Parade of Shops and Lamp Posts at Southgate Station

A parade of eight shops designed and built in 1932-33 by Charles Holden of the architectural practice Adams, Holden and Pearson for the London Passenger Transport Board. The shops form a segmental curved structure with ten units divided by a cut-through separating six shops from four. They are constructed of red brick with roofs concealed behind high parapets.

The ground floor features bronzed shop fronts, fully glazed above low mosaic-clad plinths with narrow fascia bands and clerestories. The first floor is distinguished by a strip of glazing with a strongly horizontal pattern of steel glazing bars. The curved ends have full-height glazing and clerestories set slightly behind very narrow fascia bands. The central shops are set back behind circular, entirely unmoulded columns clad in mosaic tiling, with blind red brick walling above dominated by a large clock placed at the centre of the curve. The northern end contains one bay of brickwork and security doors where a waiting room originally stood, before the more pronounced of the two curved ends begins, which was also originally part of the waiting room. Rooflights in the concrete roof slab behind the columns are an integral part of the design. The lettering 'STATION PARADE' is set in the blind walling above. The rear elevation is similar. Above the cut-through and stretching between two first-floor windows is the stone background to a former bullseye sign, which was missing at the time of inspection in 2008. Steel-framed windows are used to the first floor.

Eight lamp posts stand to the east and west of Station Parade, following the curved road between the station and the shops. These were erected in 1933 to the designs of Charles Holden for the London Passenger Transport Board. They comprise tapered polygonal concrete posts surmounted by narrow bronze fixings supporting a glass globe.

The shops and lamp posts are contemporary components of the group of transport buildings connected with Southgate Underground Station. Southgate Station was approved in 1930 and opened in March 1933 on the northern extension of the Piccadilly Line. This seven-mile extension beyond the original terminus of Finsbury Park was designed to serve enlarging suburban areas in north and west Middlesex. The first section, from Finsbury Park to Arnos Grove, which included stations at Manor House, Turnpike Lane, Wood Green and Bounds Green, opened on 19 September 1932. Southgate and Enfield West (now Oakwood) followed in March 1933, and the terminus at Cockfosters opened on 31 July 1933. The London Passenger Transport Board was created on 1 July 1933.

This group of stations was commissioned by Frank Pick and designed by architect Charles Holden, who together created an architecturally distinguished group of buildings. Pick worked for London underground railways from 1906-1940, consistently promoting high-quality, well-detailed design he believed essential for serving the public. Holden was an accomplished Arts and Crafts architect in the Edwardian period who uniquely embraced modernism following a 1930 study tour with Pick of continental railway stations and modern architecture. Together they firmly promoted functionalist modernism for the new station designs, taking advantage of newly available materials and adopting the continental and American idea of a primary concourse as circulation space, with the ticket hall as the dominant element of the new buildings.

The stations of the Piccadilly Line extension to Cockfosters were all sited at important bus interchanges, but only at Southgate and Turnpike Lane was a whole parade of shops and series of bus stops built as intended, and only at Southgate do they have special interest. The parade of shops and lamp posts exemplify the attention to every detail demanded by Frank Pick of his designers.