Edgware: The Railway public house

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 25 Jul 2009

This has to be one of the finest examples in the land of that 1930s phenomenon, the Mock Tudor pub. This one even has a separate lodge, on the right, connected to the main building by a covered archway that goes over the entrance to the stables, (aka the car park). There are classic chimneys and, beneath the first floor windows, heraldic crests. Alas the building is boarded up and closed. In fact this is just another footnote in the saga of the demise of the former Great Northern Railway (GNR)'s branch line to Edgware. The line opened in 1867 and was the first railway to be built to Edgware from London. The terminus station occupied the site immediately to the left of this building, now the Broadwalk Shopping Centre. The first Railway hotel followed shortly afterwards in 1870, but that was demolished in 1930 to be replaced by the current Mock Tudor pub on the site in 1932. But the underground station at Edgware was opened in 1924, with its terminus immediately to the north-east of the GNR one, and, faced with the competition on a more direct route to London, the former GNR line, by this time run by the London & North Eastern Railway, closed to passengers in 1939, and the station was subsequently demolished. So The Railway is a reminder of Edgware's original station, not the current one.

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