Redbridge Underground Station

Redbridge Underground Station

This station is built on a traffic island on the north side of the A12 trunk road, designed to provide an integrated bus link. The building is constructed of mixed red and brown Buckinghamshire brick on a low concrete plinth, with flat concrete slab roofs and metal-framed Crittall glazing.

The station has a distinctive D-shaped plan, comprising a low circular single-storey booking hall and a tall ventilation tower. A square brick tower projects slightly from the flat southern elevation, bearing London Underground roundels on its east and west sides. This tower is similar to those at Bounds Green and Turnpike Lane on the Piccadilly Line. It serves a ventilation function, positioned over the steps to platform level to divert the draft of incoming trains, but its primary purpose is to advertise the station's presence in the landscape. South of the tower is a raised platform containing a glass-brick skylight that lights the stairway to the platforms. This skylight is surrounded by a distinctive metal balustrade incorporating London Underground roundels and the letters L and T.

The elevated circular drum of the ticket hall was originally pierced by three external entrances to the north, east and west, with the stairway to the platforms exiting to the south below the tower. The western entrance was later blocked to provide increased office space. The exterior elevations retain their two original timber shop fronts, metal windows and tile-bordered poster panels, as well as the original bronze illuminated sign panels with roundels at the ends above the two remaining entrances, although the name panels themselves are later replacements.

The booking hall interior is lined with grey-brown Staffordshire brickwork below a buff brick ring beam and glazed clerestory. The concrete lantern is supported on short round columns and consists of twelve ribs radiating from a circular central hub. The recessed segments created by these ribs are each filled with sixteen circular pavement lights. Each rib carries a fluorescent light tube with the original fittings. The interior has been modernised for the Underground Ticketing System but retains a large amount of original signage, including illuminated sign boxes to the entrances. The bronze Johnston lettering above the office and water closet doors and public telephone niches in the entrances has been lost, although their outline remains. Most doors are original. The cream floor tiles are thought to be original, and there is a set of bronze covers to the Bostwick gates to the platform stairs. The stairs have been re-tiled; they originally contained some decorative tiles by Harold Stabler.

The platform was created by the cut and cover method, which is why it has vertical walls. It has the distinction of being the shallowest sub-surface platform on the Underground system, at only 4.87 metres below ground level. The unadorned concrete roof is supported by a concrete central spine supported on tiled square pillars with niches for the original wooden platform benches. Above these are mostly original bronze-framed Johnston roundels. The cream Poole Pottery tiling to the upper frieze of the central spine, with its blue border and roundel motif, is original, although the tiling to the pillars has been replaced. The walls on the far side of the tracks mostly retain the original cream tiles with a blue upper dado and black tile surrounds to the poster panels, though the roundels are not original. The original stone platform surface survives, as do two blue roundel platform clocks and bronze equipment cases. The Auto Phone box on the platform has the remains of the Johnston lettering.

Two illuminated London Underground roundels with bronze fittings are mounted on concrete posts just to the south of the station. The exterior concrete lamp standards with their T-shaped fittings no longer survive.