Ranked: London's most beautiful stations

The rebuild of this station, finished in 2012, transformed it from a station perched at one end of a railway bridge into a station that is itself a railway bridge, with entrances on both sides of the Thames. The glass walls running the length of the station provide perhaps the best views from any station in London, as well as being an impressive sight in themselves as you approach the station from along the river.

Confusingly now one of three separate stations called Canary Wharf, serving, well, Canary Wharf, this is a vast, futuristic cathedral of a station, with light pouring in from the huge glass roof even as you descend into the bowels of what was once a drained dock. And the station has some legit sci-fi credentials – in 2016 the platforms found themselves only slightly redressed for a cameo in Star Wars: Rogue One. 

The Crystal Palace itself may have been destroyed by fire in 1936, but the station which was built to serve it remains. It’s a peculiarly grand building for what is now an ordinary station serving the commuters of south London: the modern platform roof, added in 2015 over a century after the original was removed due to safety concerns, has a temporary feeling that only adds to the sense that it all belongs to the Victorians (and at any moment they might come to ask for it back).

Though Surbiton has had a train station since the 1830s, it was rebuilt in 1937 to create the stunning building that exists now. If it didn’t have ‘Surbiton Station’ plastered across it in large letters it could easily be mistaken for an Art Deco theatre or cinema. When first built even the colour was a statement – in the new age of the electric train you could paint a station white without worrying about steam trains immediately getting it all dirty. Albeit, that this wasn’t exactly the end of air pollution in London, and these days it could do with a little TLC. 

Think of a typical District line station and what will probably come to mind is either something quite suburban or a pokey platform tucked away under some bit of central London. Earl’s Court’s District line platforms are an exception: tucked under a shed that is a lot bigger inside than what you might assume from street level, they provide an odd sense of glamour to usually mundane journeys. With these surroundings, it’s easy to feel like you’re setting off on an actual adventure, rather than just waiting for the next train to Upminster. There’s also a TARDIS outside the Earl’s Court Road entrance, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Like many busy London stations, it’s difficult to take in your surroundings when you are navigating a huge crowd who have all decided to place their large suitcases directly in front of where you’re trying to walk. Which is perhaps why the best view of this station is from the outside, in Exchange Square to the north, which is comparatively peaceful and gives a lovely view of, and into, the vast wrought iron train sheds themselves.

Despite its very central location, Fenchurch Street is probably London’s least celebrated railway terminal, in part due to its lack of connection to the tube. But if you do stumble upon it (Monopoly board pub crawl, anyone?) there is something quite charming about the survival of its grand 19th-century frontage, now concealed behind modern office blocks. As the poet and Victorian architecture obsessive John Betjeman once said: this a ‘delightful hidden old station’.

No list of London stations would be complete without one of Leslie Green’s iconic London Underground designs, recognisable from their exteriors and built using ox-blood red terracotta blocks. Green designed dozens of stations for what are now the Bakerloo, Northern and Piccadilly lines: Chalk Farm station’s wedge-shaped site means it has the longest of his distinctive red frontages. Sadly his early death from tuberculosis (he was just 33), just a year after he completed his work on the underground, meant he never got to see just how key to London life his designs would become.

The obvious objection here is that there is no Crouch End station. But there was, and still is, sort of, even if it doesn’t have any trains running now. The railway line from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace closed to passengers in 1954, and then to all remaining trains 1970; the rails were removed and it’s now a nature reserve known as the Parkland Walk. Traversing this lush reserve is a lovely way to bypass north London suburbia, and the remains of Crouch End station are one of the biggest clues to the walk’s former purpose – you can still walk along the platforms, overgrown with plants but surviving. 

The most interesting bit of Newbury Park station is actually its enormous bus shelter: seven 30-foot-high concrete arches topped with a vast copper roof. It was constructed on the side of the station in 1949 (though it had been designed by architect Oliver Hill before World War Two) and was supposed to be accompanied by a rebuild of the tube station to match. That never arrived, so it stands alone, looming over the Eastern Avenue, another vision of a future that never quite came to pass.

There can be a squatness to tube station design. This is for, presumably, obvious reasons: it’s a hub for underground trains, so why waste time putting stuff up in the air? Well, because you’re Stanley Heaps and you’re designing Osterley station and you feel like it, that’s why. Initial work was done by architect Charles Holden – it’s thought he nicked the idea from a building he liked in Amsterdam – but Osterley has a tower in the middle of it, topped with  none other than a concrete obelisk. 

From the outside there isn’t a lot to say about Gants Hill – the station is in the middle of a roundabout, has no external architecture to speak of, and can only be accessed via the pedestrian tunnels underneath the busy roads. But on the inside, it’s a different story; the barrel vault ceilings (another Charles Holden job) and symmetrical pillars were notably inspired by the subway system in Moscow, which some of London Transport’s engineers had advised on. And this went both ways: the Moscow network borrowed design cues from London stations, after the Russian transport superintendent (and later Soviet premier) Nikita Khrushchev was inspired by a trip to the Big Smoke. 

As one of more than 50 underground stations designed by, yes, Charles Holden, Southgate’s circular design often gets compared to a flying saucer – though it was conceived in 1931, long before we had blockbuster movies about alien spaceships. That said, with its Tesla-coil like centerpiece, it still retains the sense of being a vision of a future even if it wasn’t the one we actually got. The interior has some unusual features too, notably the original uplights retained on its escalators, which, although they’ ve been replaced, are clad in bronze to match the 1931 originals.

Remove the signage and you might not even guess that this grand Victorian building housed a station – if only it wasn’t wedged between two railway bridges. For many years it felt forgotten, but more recently lots of its period details have been nicely restored – the 2013 refurb was even shortlisted for the National Railway Heritage Award. Notable features include the steep wooden stairs to the platforms, which could perhaps do with a being a little less ‘authentic’. It also, unusually, has one platform made entirely of wood, although sadly it’s been out of use since 2012.