The station was opened by the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) on 1 January 1869,[12] in an area of market gardens and orchards.

Between 1 June 1870 and 31 October 1870, the Great Western Railway (GWR) briefly ran services from Paddington to Richmond via Hammersmith & City Railway (now the Hammersmith & City line) tracks to Grove Road then on the L&SWR tracks through Kew Gardens.

[15] A brass plaque at the station commemorates its reopening on 7 October 1989 by Michael Portillo MP, Minister of State for Transport, after it had been refurbished.

The two-storey yellow brick station buildings are unusually fine examples of mid-Victorian railway architecture and are protected as part of the Kew Gardens conservation area.

[citation needed] Kew Gardens is the only station on the London Underground network that has a pub attached to it.

Previously known as The Railway, and subsequently as The Pig and Parrot and as The Flower and Firkin, the pub reopened after renovation in 2013 as The Tap on the Line.

It is a rare surviving example of a reinforced concrete structure built using a pioneering technique devised by the French engineer François Hennebique.

[17] The bridge has a narrow deck and very high walls, originally designed to protect its users' clothing from the smoke of steam trains passing underneath.