Aldgate East tube station

Aldgate tube station is a London Underground station located at Aldgate in the City of London.

The station 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, and its ticket office is part-time only.

Platforms 1 and 4 at Aldgate are the only two platforms on the network to be served exclusively by the Circle Line. There are 2 other platforms used mainly by Circle Line trains: platform 2 at Gloucester Road and platform 2 at Edgware Road, however these can be used by District trains if required- i.e. during engineering work or disruption. All other Circle Line platforms are shared by the District, Metropolitan and/or Hammersmith & City Lines.

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 2005, one of the four bombs in the 7 July 2005 London bombings was detonated by Shehzad Tanweer on a Circle Line train that had left Liverpool Street and was close to Aldgate. Seven commuters were killed in the explosion: Anne Moffatt, 46, Lee Baisden, 34, Benedetta Ciaccia, 30, Richard Ellery, 22, Richard Gray, 41, Carrie Louise Taylor, 24, and Fiona Stevenson, 29. Of the tube stations affected by the bombings, Aldgate was the first to be reopened, once police had handed back control of the site to London Underground following the extensive search for evidence. Once the damaged tunnel was repaired by Metronet engineers, the line was reopened, also allowing the Metropolitan Line to be fully restored, since the closure had meant all trains had terminated two stations early at Moorgate.

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.

Transport links
Aldgate station is a short walk from Fenchurch Street railway station, which is served by trains run by c2c.

London bus routes 15, 25, 40, 42, 67, 78, 100, 115, 135, 205, 254 and night bus routes N15, N253, 550 and 551 all stop near the station.

Services
Trains to Amersham and Watford only start from Aldgate in Peak hours. At off-peak times these services depart from Baker Street
 * 6tph(trains per hour) to Uxbridge(Metropolitan Line)


 * 6tph to Edgware Road via Embankment (Circle Line)
 * 6tph to Hammersmith via Liverpool Street (Circle Line)