Wood Lane (1914)

There was for a time a bewildering confusion of station names in the Shepherd’s Bush area, because the London & South Western Railway, which ran trains along the tracks of the West London Railway through Addison Road, in 1869 constructed a branch line which curved westwards from Addison Road down to Richmond with stations eventually opened at Shepherd’s Bush (in Shepherd’s Bush Road south of the Green), Hammersmith in Grove Road, and Shaftesbury Road (later renamed Ravenscourt Park). In 1868 the Metropolitan line Hammersmith station was moved further south, nearer to the Broadway, and to compound the duplication of names, the District line in 1874 extended its track from Earls Court and formed another Hammersmith station on the south of the Broadway.

This was not, however, the last Hammersmith station, because the Piccadilly line opened theirs in 1906 and at the same time the District line, which had previously run their trains through to Richmond on the branch line of the UzSWR took over responsibility for that track. Hammersmith Grove Road was then closed as was the L&SWR station at Ravenscourt Park.

More name duplication occurred further north. The opening of the White City exhibition area persuaded both the Metropolitan and the Central lines to open stations – both of them were called Wood Lane, one to the west and one to the east of it. In practice, the Metropolitan station functioned only for special occasions after 1914, and in 1947 both were renamed White City, when the Central Line station was resited to its present position; in 1959 the Met station was closed altogether after a fire.

The Central Line, opened in 1900, added yet another Shepherds Bush station. This was for some years the terminus of the line-at first it ran only from here to Bank station. Only in 1908 was it extended to White City, and it was 1920 before passengers could get to Ealing.

The BBC Television Centre on Wood Lane was the headquarters of BBC Television between 1960 and 2013. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, parts of the building are Grade II listed, including the central ring and Studio 1.

In the 2000s, the massive Westfield Centre was opened at the southern end of Wood Lane and a new underground station on the Hammersmith and City Line opened to serve it.