Belsize Park tube station

Belsize Park is a station on the Edgware branch of the Northern line in north London. It sits at the northern end of Haverstock Hill in the London Borough of Camden, between Hampstead and Chalk Farm. The station became a Grade II listed building in July 2011. A short walk north brings visitors to the Royal Free Hospital. Three lifts descend 33.2 metres to the platforms, though stairs are also available. The station opened in June 1907 as part of the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway. Its platforms can be reached by 209 steps or via the lifts. The building was designed by Leslie Green in the Modern Style, with ox-blood faience tiles and five round-arched windows. In the late 1980s the lifts were replaced and a new ticketing system installed. Before the station, the site housed the Trewint Industrial Home for Girls. Underneath the station lies a deep-level air-raid shelter built during the Second World War. The shelter provided safe accommodation for service personnel and has entrances on Haverstock Hill and Downside Crescent. The station’s staircase also appears in Mavis Doriel Hay’s 1934 murder mystery novel Murder Underground.