Waterloo Station, London: The Clock, the Victory Arch, and the Art of Not Bumping Into Anyone

Years ago, on an internship, I had a train to catch from Waterloo at eight in the morning. I was so frightened of missing it that I got there at seven. Which left me an hour, a station, and nothing to do – so I walked around it and took, conservatively, hundreds of photographs. That hour is the reason I still like the place more than a commuter should.

What I could not stop watching was the crowd. Seventy million people a year come through here, most of them in two short bursts either side of the working day. And they move in every direction at once and at genuine speed – and they do not hit each other.

Nobody is directing it. There are no lanes painted on the floor. Stand still in the middle of the concourse at ten past eight and you can watch the whole thing sort itself out around you, people finding gaps a half-second before the gaps exist.

There is a name for it. Crowds self-organise into lanes without anyone deciding to: you fall in behind somebody going your way, the person behind you does the same, and within seconds the floor has invisible corridors on it. It is the most impressive piece of engineering in the building and it is not part of the building at all.

The clock hangs from the roof in the middle of the concourse – which is the whole point of it.

The Clock Everybody Meets Under

First, a correction, because a lot of pages about Waterloo get this wrong and an earlier version of this one did too: there is no clock tower. The clock does not sit on top of anything. It hangs on chains from the roof girders in the dead centre of the concourse, four faces pointing four ways, so that wherever you come in from you can see one of them. Each face is five feet six inches across.

It was made by Gents' of Leicester and installed as part of the great rebuild of the station. And it has been London's default meeting place ever since – the thing people say instead of an address. "Under the clock at Waterloo" needs no further explanation to anyone who lives here.

The Kinks put that habit into a song in 1967, and Waterloo Sunset has been doing the station's reputational work ever since. Since 2010 it has adjusted itself for British Summer Time, which slightly spoils the romance and saves somebody a climb.

Is Waterloo Station Named After the Battle of Waterloo?

Yes. The station opened in 1848 and took its name from the Battle of Waterloo of 1815, by way of the nearby Waterloo Bridge, which had been named for the battle first. The name spread so thoroughly that the whole surrounding district is now called Waterloo too.

How Old Is Waterloo Station, and When Was It Built?

Waterloo opened on 11 July 1848, built by the London and South Western Railway to replace its earlier terminus at Nine Elms, and designed by William Tite. That makes it well over 175 years old – although almost nothing of the 1848 station survives. What you walk through today is the vast early twentieth-century rebuild, finished in 1922.

How Many Platforms Does Waterloo Have, and Is It the Busiest?

Twenty-four, numbered 1 to 24. Waterloo handled around 70 million passenger entries and exits in 2024–25, and it was Britain's busiest station for well over a decade – but it is not any more. Liverpool Street overtook it in 2023, once the Elizabeth line was running in full. Second busiest in the country is still a great deal of people to fit through one room.

Is Waterloo East the Same Station?

No – and this catches people out constantly, usually while they are already late. Waterloo East is a separate station on a different line, served by Southeastern, running out towards Kent. It is joined to the main terminus by a walkway, so it is easy to reach, but it is not the same set of platforms and you cannot see it from the concourse.

The practical version: check whether your ticket says London Waterloo or London Waterloo East, because they are different stations with different trains. To get across, head for the link bridge near Exit 3 – there is a lift as well as stairs. Allow ten minutes if you are carrying anything, and more than that at half past eight in the morning, when the concourse you have to cross is at its least crossable.

What Style Is Waterloo Station Built In?

Not Gothic – which is worth saying plainly, because you will find it described that way all over the internet, including, until today, here. Waterloo is Imperial Baroque, faced in Portland stone. Classical, confident, imperial in the most literal sense, built by a railway company at the height of its powers and finished four years after the First World War ended.

The rebuild took twenty years and three architects. John Wykeham Jacomb-Hood designed the roof and platforms, having gone to America first to look at how they built big stations there. He died in 1914 and Alfred Weeks Szlumper took it on. James Robb Scott designed the office range along the front, and the arch.

If you want the older, spikier kind of railway architecture – the pointed arches and the red brick – that is St Pancras across the river. And the two make a good pair precisely because they are opposites.

The Victory Arch: The Bit Everyone Walks Straight Past

This is the thing I would send anyone to see, and almost nobody does, because it is an exit and people use exits at speed. Exit 5, on the Station Approach side, is the Victory Arch – James Robb Scott's war memorial to the men of the London and South Western Railway who were killed in the First World War.

There is a figure on either side: Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, in armour, for 1914; and Peace for 1918. It is not tucked away in a side chapel somewhere. It is the main ceremonial entrance, which means the railway company chose to make the front door of its station a memorial to its own dead. And then let a hundred thousand people a day hurry through it without looking up. Look up.

The Funeral Railway That Waterloo Pushed Out

This is my favourite thing about Waterloo and it is not, technically, at Waterloo any more.

By the middle of the nineteenth century London's graveyards were catastrophically full. So a company bought a very large piece of Surrey, opened Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, and built a private railway to get people there – the dead and the mourners together, on the same train. The London Necropolis Railway opened on 13 November 1854, from its own terminus right beside Waterloo. The funeral train left at 11.35 in the morning and ran the twenty-three miles down to a station inside the cemetery itself.

In 1902 it had to move a few hundred yards south – because the London and South Western Railway wanted the land to expand Waterloo. So the station in this post is the reason the funeral railway shifted. It kept running from its new home on Westminster Bridge Road for another forty years, until the night of 16–17 April 1941, when one of the last great air raids on London hit the terminus. It never reopened.

The office building survived, though, and it is still standing at 121 Westminster Bridge Road, about five minutes' walk from the Victory Arch. It looks like an ordinary handsome red-brick frontage until you know what it was. The words London Necropolis are still carved above the entrance, now covered over. Go and stand in front of it; it is the last piece of the strangest railway this city ever ran.

Whatever Happened to Eurostar at Waterloo?

It left. Waterloo International opened in 1994 and for thirteen years this was where you caught a train to Paris – a curved glass shed on the western side, built specially for it.

In November 2007 Eurostar moved to St Pancras International, where the new high-speed line came in. And the international terminal sat largely empty for years afterwards – one of the odder sights in London, a whole station with nothing in it. The platforms have since been brought back into ordinary domestic use, which is a better ending than it looked like getting.

The Best Time to Actually Look at It

Seven in the morning, as it turns out, though I only learned that by accident. The concourse is lit, the departure boards are full, the roof has light coming through it and the crowd has not arrived yet, so you can see the floor. An hour later the same space is unphotographable and far more interesting to watch.

Both are worth doing, and they are twenty minutes apart. Go early, look at the arch and the roof and the clock while the place is still a building. Then stand still somewhere out of the way at half past eight and watch it stop being one.

📍 Where: London Waterloo, Station Approach, South Bank, London SE1 8SW.

🚇 Getting there: Waterloo Underground is in the station, on the Bakerloo, Jubilee, Northern and Waterloo & City lines. The Waterloo & City – "the Drain" – runs to Bank and essentially only on weekdays, which catches people out.

♿ Access: Step-free from the concourse to every platform, with lifts throughout the station, and a lift on the link bridge across to Waterloo East. The Underground below is only partly step-free, so check that separately.

🧳 Left luggage: There is an office in the station, run by Excess Baggage. Hours and prices change, so check before you plan a day around it.

⏰ Opening: Free, obviously, and open around the clock. For photographs, before 7.30am or after 8pm; for people-watching, 8–9am or 5.30–6.30pm on a weekday.

Nearby: The South Bank starts two minutes away – the river, the Royal Festival Hall and the London Eye are all an easy walk from Exit 5. The old Necropolis building is five minutes the other way, at 121 Westminster Bridge Road.

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All photos were taken by Ina/WithinLondon, unless stated otherwise.