Hatton Cross tube station

Hatton Cross is a London Underground station on the Piccadilly line’s Heathrow branch. It stands between the Great South West Road and the Heathrow Airport Southern Perimeter Road, close to the crossroads of the Great South West Road and Hatton Road. The station serves a large area that includes Feltham to the south and Bedfont to the west. It was named after the former coaching-road crossroads now marked by the nearby major road intersection. The small settlement of Hatton straddles the borders of the London boroughs of Hillingdon and Hounslow. Hatton Cross opened on 19 July 1975 as the temporary Heathrow terminus until the Central station opened two years later. In 1975 it was one of 279 active stations on the London Underground, the highest total ever recorded. A single-track loop was built to serve the new Terminal 4, opening in 1986 and running clockwise from Hatton Cross. The loop closed in 2005 while Terminal 5 was under construction and reopened the following year. The station’s platforms lie in a cut-and-cover tunnel, and the platform tiling features patterns based on the British Airways Speedbird logo. The single-storey concrete-and-glass building houses a busy bus station and includes a concrete frieze by the artist William Mitchell. To the east the line briefly surfaces to cross the River Crane before diving underground again. The junction for the Terminal 4 loop can be seen from the end of the westbound platform, though it is accessible only from the westbound track.