A radical rebuild of Colindale tube station on the Northern line has been approved by Barnet Council.

The old “shed” of a ticket hall will be demolished, and completely new station building with an substantially enlarged ticket hall – around double the size of the existing space.

Although it be surrounded on both sides by two tall towers, the station itself will be freestanding, and the design, by BDP of the curved wooden roofline takes its inspiration from early aircraft design at the nearby Hendon Aerodrome.

The station will be built on a new slab over the rail tracks, allowing for the existing bridge-parapet to be removed and the pavement in front of the station widened.

A total of £5 million in funding from TfL’s Growth Fund has been allocated for the new station building with step-free access and new pedestrian and cycle links. The project will cost in total some £22 million, so the remainder of the cost comes from the housing development.

The new ticket hall will come with nine ticket barriers (compared to 5 at the moment), and the introduction of step-free access to platform level with the provision of a new lift, which will sit between the two existing staircases down to the platform level.

The upgrade will also be good news for the nearby RAF Museum.

As well as the modernisation of Colindale Tube station, the proposals also include the creation of more than 300 new homes around the station site, of which half will be affordable housing.

Although planning is granted, TfL is currently reviewing the applications to build the development, so work on the new station is unlikely to start until 2021, with completion of the station rebuild in 2022.

The proposals are also subject to approval from the Mayor of London.

The station opened on 18 August 1924 on what was then the ‘Hampstead and Highgate Line’, the first station of the second section of the extension to Edgware. The station’s ticket hall was based on a classical style building designed by architect Stanley Heaps, who had previously been an assistant to Leslie Green.

At the time of its construction Colindale was still largely open fields and the arrival of the railway spurred significant development in this part of north London. Badly damaged during WW2, the station was rebuilt in the mid-1960s, but was in turn rebuilt in 2010, and redesigned again in 2015.

And now, it’s about to embark on it’s fourth stage in its life.