April 27: Mornington Crescent

On this date in 1998 Tube station Mornington Crescent reopened after 5 years. Here are some things you didn't know about this London location.

1. The station is on the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line, between Euston and Camden Town, although not where it appears to be on a standard tube map. Tube maps show Mornington Crescent to the west of the City branch tunnels, it is in fact to the east of them, because the two branches cross over one another at Euston.
2. The station was part of the original route of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (now the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line) and first opened on 22 June 1907.
3. It almost wasn't called Mornington Crescent. Before it opened, the name Seymour Street had been proposed instead.
4. It wasn't a very busy station, and at one time was closed at weekends, and before 1966 Edgware-bound trains passed through without stopping.
5. On 23 October 1992 the station was closed for refurbishment, including the replacement of the 85-year-old lifts. The intention was to open it within one year, but turned out to be in such a state of neglect that it was closed for most of the 1990s, and there was talk of closing it permanently.
6. The campaign to get it opened again sprang from people being fond of it because of the game featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. It was in fact re-opened by the regular cast of the show (Humphrey Lyttelton, Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden) and a memorial plaque to the late Willie Rushton, one of the longest-serving panelists, was installed at the station in 2002.
7. The game is a spoof with no actual rules. It consists of each panellist in turn announcing a landmark or street, most often a tube station on the London Underground system. The apparent aim is to be the first to announce "Mornington Crescent". Interspersed with the turns is improvised discussion amongst the panellists and host regarding the rules and legality of each move, as well as the strategy the panellists are apparently using. The game has been a regular feature of the show since the sixth series in 1978. According to Chairman Humphrey Lyttelton, the game was invented purely to annoy a producer who was unpopular with the panellists. One day, the team members were drinking, when they heard him coming. "Quick," said one, "Let's invent a game with rules he'll never understand."
8. Since its 1998 reopening, the station has been open at the same times as most other stations, including weekends, in an attempt to relieve the pressure on the increasingly busy Camden Town station.
9. China Miéville mentions the station and its long state of disuse during the 1990s in his novel King Rat (1998), also using it as scene of a brutal murder by dismemberment via a passing train.
10. The station is also the location for two fictional organisations - the offices of the Peculiar Crimes Unit are above Mornington Crescent tube station in Christopher Fowler's "Bryant and May" mysteries, and the station is also home to the Ministry of Serendipity, a fictional agency whose main activity is to ensure the British Empire rules the globe, via dealings with aliens in Robert Rankin novels. According to Rankin, the top secret nature of the ministry's work is the real reason why the station was only open on weekdays and closed for "repairs" for much of the 1990s.

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