Changes at High Street Kensington

[spsmiler]

On the Wikipedia Encyclopeadia there is a photograph of High Street Kensington station in 1892 - when it had an overall roof. The track configuration is the same as now.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Street_Kensington_1892.jpg

Does anyone know when it was rebuilt - and why?

Was it bombed in WW2?

The Wikipedia image shows the platform exits as being at the northern end of the station, which suggests that the station building was right on Kensington High Street. So could it be that the station building and much else were torn down for the building of the Kensington Arcade and its shops?

This would account for half the station being subterranean and the platform entrances now being 'further along' the platforms.

Simon

[ladderane]

The changes were done early in the twentieth century to capitalise on the station's street frontage.

More information:
www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol42/pp77-98#h2-0008
www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=509380

[roythebus]

Remember that until the mid 1960s there was a big Midland Railway coal yard at High Street, where the hotel now stands. Look south and you could see the ramp up to it on the right side of the e/b district from Earls Court.

[spsmiler]

Thanks all.

I had wondered whether the station had been rebuilt to capitalise on property / land values.

I am too young to have known the coal yard.

Simon