Entrance to Aldgate tube station

Aldgate is a London Underground station in Aldgate. It is on the Circle Line between Tower Hill and Liverpool Street. It is also the eastern terminus of the Metropolitan Line. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

History

The station was opened on 18 November 1876 with the southbound extension to Tower Hill opening on 25 September 1882, completing the Circle. Services from Aldgate originally ran far further west than they do now, reaching as far as Richmond, and trains also used to run from Aldgate to Hammersmith (the Hammersmith & City Line now bypasses the station). It only became the terminus of the Metropolitan Line in 1941. Prior to that, Metropolitan trains had continued on to the southern termini of the East London Line. The station was badly damaged by German bombing during World War II.

In literature

Aldgate tube station plays an important role in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (published in the anthology His Last Bow).

In the story, the body of a junior clerk named Cadogan West is found on the tracks outside Aldgate station, with a number of stolen plans for the Bruce-Partington submarine in his pocket. It seems clear enough that "the man, dead or alive, either fell or was precipitated from a train." But why, wonders Holmes, did the dead man not have a ticket?

It turns out that the body was placed on top of a train carriage before it reached Aldgate, via a window in a house on a cutting overlooking the Metropolitan Line. Holmes realises that the body only fell off the carriage roof when the train was jolted by the dense concentration of points at Aldgate.