The London Transport Museum has launched a new series of Hidden London tours featuring disused Tube stations. Chris Milner visited Down Street station, a location that became a bomb-proof bunker and was used by wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
CHURCHILL’S SECRET STATION
On the walls in the unused passageways at London Euston are remnants of British Rail posters from the 1960s. LT MUSEUM
THERE are around 40 abandoned stations on the 250-mile London Underground network.
They are a mixture of sub-surface and above ground stations; while many are intact and obvious to those familiar with the external architectural style, other stations have disappeared completely.
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It is well known that many deep-level Underground stations provided air-raid refuge for Londoners during the Second World War bombing campaigns by the Luftwaffe, and that the Aldwych branch was closed and used by the British Museum to store valuable artefacts.
The public fascination for visiting forgotten subterranean stations has bordered on the insatiable. When the London Transport Museum has held public open days at the former Grade II Piccadilly Line Aldwych station – which closed to services in 1994 and has been used in around a dozen films – it was no surprise that the tours were oversubscribed.
Read more in May’s edition of The RM
