'St John's Wood tube station' is a
London Underground station at
St John's Wood. It is on the
Jubilee Line, between
Swiss Cottage and
Baker Street. It is in
Travelcard Zone 2.
The station was opened on
20 November,
1939 on a new section of deep-level tunnel constructed between Baker Street and
Finchley Road when the
Metropolitan Line's services on its
Stanmore branch were transferred to the
Bakerloo Line. It was subsequently transferred along with the rest of the Stanmore branch to the Jubilee Line when it opened in
1979.
With the opening of St John's Wood station, two nearby stations on the Metropolitan Line were closed. These were
Lord's (which had originally been opened in
1868 as St John's Wood Road) and
Marlborough Road.
The station building is located on the corner of Acacia Road and Wellington Road and
tube maps from late
1938 and early
1939 indicate that it was originally to be given the name 'Acacia Road' or 'Acacia'. This station is the nearest one to
Lord's Cricket Ground and
Abbey Road Studios. For this reason
Beatles memorabilia is sold at the station.
Trivia
In recent years, the station has achieved a small amount of notoriety due to it being the only London Underground station that has no letters in common with the word '
mackerel', a fact that has frequently appeared in
quizzes since the fact was publicised, for example, in "This Book", a trivia compendium. The word 'mackerel' is by no means unique in this feat, however, as several hundred words ('algebra', 'blackberry', 'paperclip'...) satisfy the same property of having letters in common with all stations except St John's Wood.
Furthermore, St John's Wood is not unique in being able to satisfy such a restriction, and there are at least 84 stations for which words exist that have no letters in common with exactly one station (for example 'wavelength' and
Oxford Circus; 'photocopying' and
Russell Square).
There are a number of stations which do not share letters with other stations. In fact, there are 61 stations which have just one station with which they do not share any letters, such as
Barbican (only
Temple does not share letters) and
Liverpool Street (only
Bank does not share letters).
Incidentally, the
Washington Metro has only one station that does not have any of the letters of "mackerel" in its name,
Huntington.
The station does contain the second rarest letter on the London Underground - "J". Only St John's Wood, St James's Park and Willesden Junction contain the letter "J". The rarest letter is "Z" which is only found in Belsize Park.
Gallery
External links
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London's Transport Museum Photographic Archive
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