The sub-surface Circle and District line platforms were opened on 1 October 1868 by the Metropolitan Railway (MR) as part of its extension from Paddington to Gloucester Road.

[7] The station was rebuilt in the late 1950s and reopened on 1 March 1959, now linking the two 'Notting Hill Gate stations' on the Circle and District and Central lines, which had previously been accessed on either side of the street, with a shared sub-surface ticket hall and escalators down to the deeper Central line, replacing the aged and now sealed-off lifts.

The station was refurbished from 2010 to 2011, with new ceramic tiling throughout the subway entrances, deep-level passageways and Central line tube platforms as well as a modified ticket hall layout.

[8] A scheme was developed by the architects Weston Williamson to provide canopies over the entrances from the street,[9] but this has not been implemented.

In the 1968 film Otley, one of the Central line platforms at Notting Hill Gate (or a station pretending to be it) is where the assassin and coach driver Johnston, played by Leonard Rossiter, blows himself up opening a booby-trapped suitcase full of money.