Kennington tube station
Kennington tube station is a London Underground station in Kennington, on both the Charing Cross and Bank branches of the Northern Line. Its neighbours to the north are Waterloo on the Charing Cross branch and Elephant & Castle on the Bank branch; the next station to the south is Oval. It is in Travelcard Zone 2.
The station was opened on 18 December 1890 as part of London’s first deep-level tube, the City & South London Railway (C&SLR) (now the Bank branch). Two extra platforms were added in 1926 when the connection via Waterloo to Embankment on the former Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (now the Charing Cross branch) was built.
At this time the old northbound platform was reconstructed with the track running down the other side of the tunnel (to allow cross-platform interchange), resulting in unusually wide tunnel mouths.
Unlike the other original C&SLR stations at Stockwell, Oval and Elephant & Castle, which were all rebuilt during the 1920s modernisation and despite the major works taking place underground, Kennington’s surface building saw little in terms of a physical update at that time. It therefore represents the only station of the C&SLR’s original section in a condition close to its original design. The station is currently undergoing its first major refurbishment in almost eighty years.