Mill Hill East is quite a curious name for an Underground station – being that there’s no Mill Hill anywhere on the tube. Putting East at the end is rather unconventional too since the nearest Northern Line station geographically is West Finchley, not Finchley West.
The mystery – though not why East is at the end of the name – goes back to the original branch line which didn’t curtail at Mill Hill East but instead carried on to its original destination of Edgware, via a station called Mill Hill (for some of the time).
The station was opened in 1867 as part of the Great Northern Railway’s (GNR) line between Finsbury Park and Edgware. It had been built by the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway (EH&LR). The EH&LR was built as double track, but only a single track was laid, with the intention of doubling the track when business developed. However, when the GNR opened a branch from Finchley Central to High Barnet in April 1872 traffic on that section was greater, and the second track was never laid from Finchley Central to Edgware. For most of its history the service between those two stations was operated as a shuttle.
Built too early for the inter-war suburban explosion of development, initial traffic was very light – going from nowhere to nowhere in nineteenth century terms. Edgware was a village with a bus service into London straight down the Edgware Road. For those in more of a hurry, London Midland’s Mill Hill Broadway station, a mile or so away from Edgware, was five stops from St Pancras. Mill Hill station – up the line – on the Great Northern Railway was next to Mill Hill Broadway but then the traveller would need to join a Finsbury Park bound service and change there for Kings Cross. It didn’t cause much of a rush of passengers.
In time a GNR branch line was built to High Barnet from Finchley Central (the station after Mill Hill East going south) – and Barnet being a bigger centre than Edgware, this branch line started to become the main service.
By the 1900s some of the line was under pressure from overcrowding. The populations of areas along the line, particularly at Hornsey, Highgate, Muswell Hill, and Finchley, had increased considerably with the rapid Victorian expansion of London, but the GNR service had not been expanded to cope. The line was also congested with goods traffic, mostly coal and building materials. By 1903 the morning trains from Barnet were full by the time they arrived at East Finchley. As the doors of the compartments in the carriages were in those days locked with aid of a simple square key, some passengers took to purchasing these keys from local ironmongers, and locking the doors from the inside. It was not unknown for harsh words and even, on odd occasions, for blows to be exchanged.
1930 OS map showing branch from Mill Hill East to Edgware
The Carl Zeiss/Bausch & Lomb Optical Works was established at Mill Hill East in 1912 and demolished in about 1990, to be replaced by a large building owned by the Jehovah Witnesses, to complement their nearby Watchtower House built on the site of the former Bittacy House.
In time the London Underground took over the railway as it extended the Northern Line as far as Finchley Central and took over the GNR branch line to High Barnet along with the Finsbury Park to Edgware line. Main line passenger services ended in 1939 and Northern line trains started serving Mill Hill East in 1941.
There were well-advanced plans to extend the line from Edgware to Bushey as the Second World War broke out.
After the war, the introduction of London’s Metropolitan Green Belt made the project to continue the line to Bushey unnecessary as the intended housing development proposed in the area was prevented by the new legislation. The plan was formally cancelled in October 1950. In 1953 the modernisation and electrification of the remaining sections of track between Mill Hill East to Edgware were also abandoned.
The line from Finsbury Park to Edgware continued to be used for goods traffic, primarily coal, milk and building materials, even into the period when diesel engines had replaced steam locomotion. However, the introduction of the Clean Air Act of 1956 established a shift away from coal as a fuel for domestic heating and the demand for coal slumped. At the same time, the expansion of road haulage reduced the demand for rail transportation of other bulk loads and the line closed completely between Edgware and Mill Hill East in 1964 with equipment and track removed by the following year.
This leaves Mill Hill East as the terminus on a curious branch line of the Northern.
Mill Hill East station looking west (1930s)
In this photo of Mill Hill East station dating from the 1930s, what appears to be the goods shed is seen beyond the platform. There was no goods yard as such although there was a weighbridge at street level between the station building and the stationmaster’s house. On the embankment there was a loop siding with a goods shed to the west of the platform. Some time in the 1930s a goods yard was built at street level on Bittacy Hill.
A section of the 1930s goods dock survives in an industrial estate on the east side of Bittacy Hill.
The station had been renamed Mill Hill East (previously Mill Hill) on 1 March 1928 and was sometimes referred to as Mill Hill East for Mill Hill Barracks. It served the nearby Inglis Barracks, home to the Middlesex Regiment and the Royal Engineers Eastern Command workshop which was literally at the end of the yard.
London Transport bus TD104 sits in Mill Hill East station forecourt (1962) Credit: Geoff Plumb
Route 240 was introduced in the 1930s between Edgware and Golders Green and replaced the former London General Omnibus Company Route 104. Initially it was split into two sections, the Mill Hill Broadway station to Edgware section being operated by single-deck TDs and the Mill Hill to Golders Green section by double-deck RTs. This was because of the low railway bridge over Mill Hill Broadway which did not permit double-decker operation. The single-deck part was renumbered 240A and extended to Page Street, and then in 1951 was further extended to Mill Hill East station. Route 240A is notable at this time as being the only London bus route that has ever accepted single tube tickets, between Mill Hill East, Mill Hill Broadway and Edgware in lieu of the planned extension of the Northern Line. A ticket for Mill Hill (The Hale) cost a little more than one to Mill Hill East, and enabled the passenger to retain his tube ticket for use on the 240A anywhere in the direction of Edgware.
The area around Mill Hill East, especially to the west, has still the air of a village about it. It is quiet and very green with plenty of parks and golf courses to hand.
Parts of the eastern side of Mill Hill have recently undergone redevelopment, with the old gas works and barracks replaced by a Waitrose supermarket and housing developments. The small local retail area at Mill Hill East is at Kelly’s Corner (officially Holders Hill Circus) east of the station. To the south of Mill Hill East are Copthall and Holders Hill. Mill Hill East was measured as the least used station on the Northern Line during the 2020s.
