Lothbury was an authorised underground railway station planned by the Great Northern & City Railway (GN&CR) but never built. It was to be located in Lothbury, in the City of London, the historic nucleus and financial centre of London.
In November 1901, the GN&CR published a notice of its intention to present a private bill to Parliament seeking permission for an extension of the company's tunnels then under construction between Finsbury Park and Moorgate Street. The bill proposed a short 270 yd (250 m) southward continuation of the line to Lothbury, which would become the southern terminus in place of Moorgate Street (now known simply as Moorgate) as originally planned. The bill received Royal Assent on 8 August 1902 as the Great Northern and City Railway Act of 1902.
The station was to have been built entirely below ground, with access to the street by lift and subways to the corners of the junction where Lothbury, Gresham Street, Moorgate Street and Princes Street converge. One peculiarity of the scheme was that the running tunnels between Moorgate Street and Lothbury stations were to have been shorter than the platform tunnels at the two stations; meaning that the front of a full-length train would have arrived at Lothbury before the rear would have left Moorgate Street. The line could not be extended any further south due to the proximity of the City & South London Railway's tunnels under Princes Street. Work began on the Moorgate Street to Lothbury section but was abandoned almost immediately, with the tunnelling shield left in place at the end of the southbound tunnel just south of Moorgate Street.
The London Underground (or simply the Underground or the Tube) is a public rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. The network is considered the oldest rapid transit system, incorporating the world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway, which opened in 1863 and is now part of the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines; and the first line to operate underground electric traction trains, the City & South London Railway in 1890, now part of the Northern line. The network has expanded to 11 lines, and in 2014/15 carried 1.305 billion passengers, making the Underground the world's 11th busiest metro system.
Lothbury is a short street in the City of London.
It runs east-west with traffic flow in both directions, from Gresham Street's junction with Moorgate to the west, and Bartholomew Lane's junction with Throgmorton Street to the east. The area was populated with coppersmiths in the Middle Ages before later becoming home to a number of merchants and bankers. Lothbury borders the Bank of England on the building's northern side, and some of Sir John Soane's work dating from 1788 can still be seen there today. Opposite the Bank is the Christopher Wren church St Margaret Lothbury.
41 Lothbury is a particularly noteworthy office building, designed by Charles Robert Cockerell, with interior columns, marble walls and floor. It was for many years the head office of National Westminster Bank.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Great Northern & City Railway planned an underground railway station at Lothbury, but this was abandoned because of financial constraints. Today the nearest London Underground station is Bank, a short way to the south. The nearest mainline railway station is Liverpool Street, with National Rail services towards East Anglia.