Seven Sisters

 

The Dorset map of 1619 shows the area we know today as Seven Sisters named as Page Greene. However, by 1805 the first series Ordnance Survey map was showing the area as Seven Sisters. The name is derived from seven elms which were planted in a circle with a walnut tree at their centre on an area of common land known as Page Green. The clump was known as the Seven Sisters by 1732. Seven Sisters is on the route of Ermine Street, the Roman road connecting London to York. At the time of Domesday, the area was within the Manor of Tottenham held by Waltheof II, Earl of Northumbria, the last of the great Anglo-Saxon Earls. The station was constructed by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) on its Stoke Newington & Edmonton Railway line and opened on 22 July 1872. On 1 January 1878, the GER opened a branch line, the Palace Gates Line, from Seven Sisters station to Palace Gates (Wood Green) station to the north-west. The Palace Gates Line was closed by British Rail in 1963 and the branch line track and platforms at Seven Sisters have been removed. On 24 July 1967 planning permission was granted to convert the station for London Underground use. The first section of the Victoria line opened on 1 September 1968 serving Seven Sisters, although a shared entrance and interchange facilities with the surface station were not opened until December 1968.

 

The original GER entrance to the station was situated in West Green Road at the north end of the surface station, but the new combined entrance was opened in Seven Sisters Road at the south end on the site of a former wood merchants yard, connecting to the west end of the Victoria line platforms. The National Rail platforms are not at street level. Platform 1 (towards London Liverpool Street) is accessed by twin staircases. Platform 2 (towards Enfield Town & Cheshunt) has a staircase and an "up" escalator. A second entrance at the east end includes the main Victoria line ticket hall, and is accessed via subways on each side of High Road just north of the junction with Seven Sisters Road. There are three Victoria line platforms at Seven Sisters: with one platform (platform 4) reserved for services which terminate at the station to return to the depot or reverse back into central London, although a connection is available for trains to continue to Walthamstow Central. The section of Victoria line between Seven Sisters and Finsbury Park stations is the longest between adjacent stations in deep level tunnels on the London Underground network. The station has escalators, cash machines, Euro cash machines, payphones and wi-fi.

 

Connections: National Rail. London Buses routes 41, 76, 123, 149, 230, 243, 259, 279, 318, 349, 476 and W4 and night routes N41 and N279 serve the station.

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