Tower Hill Tube Station

Central tube but make sure you know what exit you need!

It is on the Circle Line between Monument and Aldgate, and the District Line between Monument and Aldgate East. It is a few metres to Tower Gateway DLR station and Fenchurch Street railway station. The station is currently undergoing much delayed refurbishment with completion now due sometime in 2008.

Yeah, it’s a Tube station. Okay. On the District and Circle Lines. Convenient for the Tower of London. Teems with people during morning & evening commuter rushes and with tourists during the summer and peak tourism times of the year. Interesting place to watch City workers doing the daily shuffle with tourists from across the globe just trying to figure out where in the heck they are.

Tower Hill is a key junction on the London Underground network, on the District and Circle Lines, and is one of the stations most used by tourists, being right next to the Tower of London. It also serves as the nearest tube to Fenchurch Street National Rail station, as well as being less than five minutes from Tower Gateway station on the Docklands Light Railway network. It is in Zone 1.

The station opened (slightly further west of the present location) The present station was opened as 'Tower of London’ station in 1882, when the Metropolitan Line opened a branch from Minories junction to the east. In 1884 this strecth of line was incorporated into the District Line when it was extended eastwards from Mansion House to Whitechapel. At the same time the station was moved further west, and renamed 'Mark Lane’. It was renamed in 1946 as Tower Hill. In 1967 the present station was built as part of the general redevelopment of the area and to provide more facilities. The station is currently undergoing refurbishment, having got rather tatty.

The station is served by both District and Circle Lines, on three platforms: eastbound trains towards Upminster (District) and Aldgate (Circle) use platform 1; platform 2 is for terminating District Line trains from the west, which then return to Wimbledon; and platform 3 is used for all other westbound trains.

The basic off-peak service pattern provides 12 trains an hour eastbound to Upminster (some of which terminate short at Dagenham or Barking in the peaks); and 6 trains an hour in either direction on the the Circle, and 6 per hour to Wimbledon, Ealing Broadway and Richmond, with 6 trains an hour terminating from the west.

The exits and entrances are separate above ground, which often confuses tourists, as does the presence of a terminating platform. (An indicator helpfully tells you which platform has the next westbound departure, but tourists seem happily to ignore this, sitting in the train which has just terminated while other trains trundle by…

For the DLR station, turn left after the barriers and left out of the exit; follow the footpath more or less straight ahead, then Tower Gateway is on your left in Minories. For Fenchurch Street station, walk straight ahead through the barriers and turn right out of the exit: there is a back entrance to Fenchurch Street, next to the railway bridge over Cooper’s Row, literally two minutes’ walk away. On the way, look right through the car park entrance to the hotel on your right: here is one of the largest remaining fragments of London’s City Wall.