Only one Tube station on map named after a football club

The London Underground is ancient and with the age comes inevitable quirks and idiosyncrasies that rack up through the years. While football is a big part of the beating heart of British culture, it has not made such an impression on the naming of Tube stations - in fact, football clubs are usually, like stations on the Tube map, named after the places they were founded.

That is, of course, except for Arsenal. In a strange turn of events, Arsenal London Underground station was actually named that because of Arsenal football club, according to London tour guide and influencer Jonnie Fielding, aka bowlofchalk.

The station was originally opened in 1903 and was named Gillespie Road - the name of the road in Islington, North London, on which it still currently sits. Meanwhile, 17 years earlier, Dial Square Football Club was set up in 1886 by munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, South East London.

Over the years, this football club also had name changes - it became Royal Arsenal, then Woolwich Arsenal, then The Arsenal and finally just Arsenal as we know it today. In 1913, 10 years after the opening of Gillespie Road station, Arsenal decided to move their stadium up to Highbury Square, just off Gillespie Road.

The art deco stadium is now partially listed and is no longer in use by the club. Now it is home to 725 flats after the stands were redeveloped. The centre, where the hallowed pitch used to be, remains a green area for residents to enjoy.

During their time at Highbury Square Stadium, a campaign was struck up to get the name of Gillespie Road station changed to the football team's name. Then Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman was a particularly keen advocate.

Finally, on October 31, 1932, it was renamed Arsenal (Highbury Hill). The station was expanded in the 1930s to be wider. By the 1960s the suffix was dropped from the station's name, leaving it just to be called Arsenal, after the club.

In 2006, Arsenal moved away from their classic stadium at Highbury Square, only 500 metres away, to the grand Emirates Stadium, where they still play today. Thankfully, the move was not so far away to make the special renaming of the Tube station entirely redundant.

There are still traces of the old name left over in Arsenal Station - on the platform, there is tiling that spells out Gillespie Road, a nod to its historic beginnings. It must have confused more than a few tourists unfamiliar with the network to have two different names in the station, but it's a good reminder of days gone by.

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