Wood Lane tube station (Metropolitan line)
disused station of the London Underground

Wood Lane was a station on the London Underground that was located in Shepherd's Bush, west London. It was opened in 1908 on the Hammersmith branch of the Metropolitan Railway (now the Hammersmith & City line), on the viaduct adjacent to the bridge over Wood Lane and close to a station of the same name but on the Central London Railway (now the Central line).
It was closed temporarily in 1914, reopened in 1920 and eventually closed permanently in 1959 at which time it was served by the Metropolitan line.
History
Exhibition station
The two Wood Lane stations were opened in 1908 to serve the Franco-British Exhibition and the 1908 Olympic Games in the area that was to become known as White City. The Metropolitan Railway's Wood Lane opened with the name Wood Lane (Exhibition) on 1 May 1908 and the Central London Railway's Wood Lane station opened on 14 May 1908. Both were intended to be temporary and to be closed after the exhibition and the Games. Wood Lane (Exhibition) station was closed on 31 October 1914, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The other Wood Lane became the permanent western terminus of the Central London Railway.
Reopening
The station was brought back into use on 5 November 1920, with the name Wood Lane (White City), but was open only when an exhibition or event was being staged.
It was served by the Metropolitan line and was between Shepherd's Bush and Latimer Road.
“Wood Lane tube station (Metropolitan line)” enters the record as disused station of the London Underground. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wood, Lane and tube can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Wood Lane tube station (Metropolitan line)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Wood, Lane and tube provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2593088. Authority coordinates are 51.509, -0.225. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1914, 1920 and 1959.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wood Lane tube station (Metropolitan line)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.