The station has two entrances, one on Victoria Embankment and the other on Villiers Street, adjacent to Victoria Embankment Gardens.
The station is in two parts: sub-surface platforms opened in 1870 by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR) as part of the company’s extension of the Inner Circle eastwards from Westminster to Blackfriars and deep-level platforms opened in 1906 by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) and 1914 by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR). A variety of underground and mainline services have operated over the sub-surface tracks and the CCE&HR part of the station was reconstructed in the 1920s.
After having been named both Charing Cross and Embankment, in 1974 the station was renamed Charing Cross Embankment. Then, on 12 September 1976, it became Embankment, so that the merged Strand and Trafalgar Square stations could be named Charing Cross.
Contrary to popular belief, the shortest walking distance between two stations is not the 250 metres between Leicester Square and Covent but between Charing Cross and Embankment, a distance of 100 metres.
During summer 2013, Oswald Laurence’s famous ’mind the gap’ announcement was reinstated to Embankment station after a request from his widow who would come to Embankment station after he died just to hear his voice. She asked for a copy of the iconic mind the gap announcement her husband made some 40 years before – instead staff decided to restore the recording.
