Temple (now Temple) and Blackfriars. The Met initially operated all services, receiving 55 per cent of the gross receipts for a fixed level of service. The District were also charged for any extra trains and the District's share of the income dropped to about 40 per cent. The District's level of debt meant that merger was no longer attractive to the Met and its directors resigned from the District's board. To improve its finances, the District gave the Met notice to terminate the operating agreement. Struggling under the burden of high construction costs, the District was unable to continue with the original scheme to reach Tower Hill and made a final extension of its line one station further east from Blackfriars to a previously unplanned City terminus at Mansion House. On Saturday 1 July 1871, an opening banquet was attended by the prime minister William Gladstone, who was also a shareholder. The following Monday, Mansion House opened and the District began running its own trains. From this date, the two companies operated a joint inner circle service between Mansion House and Moorgate Street via South Kensington and Edgware Road that ran every ten minutes. This was supplemented by a District service every ten minutes between Mansion House and West Brompton, and Hammersmith & City Railway and Great Western Railway (GWR) suburban services between Edgware Road and Moorgate Street. The permissions for the railway east of Mansion House were allowed to lapse. At the other end of the line, the District part of South Kensington station opened on 10 July 1871 and Earl's Court station opened on the West Brompton extension on 30 October 1871. West to Putney Bridge, Richmond, Ealing and Hounslow The District Railway's main expansion was to the west. A small station at Earl's Court, between Gloucester Road and West Brompton, opened on 31 October 1871 with three platforms. Lillie Bridge depot, opened in 1872, was built parallel to the West London Joint Railway and initially accessed by a curve onto the West London Line. This curve allowed, from 1 February 1872, the London & North Western Railway (L&NWR) to run a half-hourly outer circle service from Broad Street to Mansion House via , Addison Road and Earls Court. From 1 October 1872, the GWR also ran a half-hourly middle circle service from the Met's Moorgate Street station to Mansion House via Paddington and Earl's Court. Permission to