London Underground Circle Line history in four maps

The loop was called the Inner Circle in Parliamentary papers from the 1860s, as the Metropolitan and District Railways started to construct the capital’s first underground train lines.

Their shared goal was to link the two lines together in a circle under central London.

But the two companies fell out over money, sparking a fierce rivalry between them.

READ MORE - A brief history of the London Underground in 10 forgotten maps

• Over the coming weeks, we’ll be using maps to tell you the story of each of London’s Tube lines. The images used in this story have been provided by TfL Corporate Archives. To find out more about the history of the London Underground visit TfL's Google Arts and Culture page - https://artsandculture.google.com/story/welcome-to-tfl-tfl-archives/wAWRESAnwnAAnQ?hl=en

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The Inner Circle was planned when the Underground was first designed (Image: TfL Corporate Archives)

This caused a delay in completing the Inner Circle, which was only realised in 1884 after Government intervention when Mark Lane station, later renamed Tower Hill and relocated, was built.

At first, clockwise trains were run by the District Railway and anticlockwise trains by the Metropolitan Railway.

Map from 1927 showing which parts of the Inner Circle were on the Metropolitan line and which were on the District line (Image: TfL Corporate Archives)

Three years after the amalgamation of all of the Underground lines into one network under the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, the Circle line name was used for the first time.

London Transport Executive map 1934 (Image: TfL Corporate Archives)

But until 1949 it was not given a distinct identity on the Tube map, finally adopting its distinctive yellow colour in that year.

For the next 60 years, the line’s route remained unchanged, with trains travelling in both directions in a simple circle through Edgware Road.

Underground map from 2000 shows the Circle line as a circle - services to Hammersmith were yet to begin (Image: TfL Corporate Archives)

But in 2009, the Circle line was extended to include the route served by Hammersmith & City line trains between Edgware Road and Hammersmith.

Trains now travel in a loose spiral from Hammersmith, usually going around the circle once before terminating at Edgware Road and returning via the same route.

On the morning of July 7, 2005, 15 people died in terrorist bomb attacks on two Circle line trains, at Edgware Road and near Aldgate. 

The first walk-through air-conditioned trains were introduced on the line in 2013.

Today, the Circle line is 27km long and services call at 36 stations in total.

Due to its history as a separate service rather than an individual line, all of the stations on the Circle line are called at by at least one other Tube line.

Make sure to check our website at the same time next week to find out about the history of the Northern line.