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Showing posts with label London Underground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London Underground. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
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The asphalt of London is but a gateway. Under the streets lie a chaotic warren: from the familiar rumble of the Tube, to sewers, power lines and gas lines. Somewhere within this is nestled more anomalous creations: disused Post Office transit systems, long-buried underground rivers, the 'Pindar' military citadel and the mysterious top-secret 'Q-Whitehall' complex that reportedly begins under Trafalgar Square, spans Whitehall and ends at King Charles Street.
Knowing all this is going on underfoot makes London feel more magical, and that's on top of the 2,000 years of random stuff that we don't even know is there! For example, just a couple of years ago Crossrail excavations turned up a plague pit down the road from my house.
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| The shelter in its heyday, 1944 |
And last Sunday, courtesy of a birthday surprise from my very lovely girlfriend, I got a taste of of subterranean London history. The marvellous Hidden London, run by the London Transport Museum has been hosting tours of places the public doesn't usually get to go. Way back in 2012 I went down into the disused Aldwych Tube Station, but now they've expanded to run tours of Down Street Tube Station, the 'lost tunnels' of Euston, London's first skyscraper at 55 Broadway and the Clapham South Deep Level Shelter.
Entry is by an fat pillbox now unobtrusively subsumed into a modern apartment building. Within it lie 180 stairs, spiralling down into a wonder of 1940s engineering and a frozen slice of Blitz era London.
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| Areas named for British Naval officers |
From a contemporary vantage point it's difficult to imagine life during the worst months of the Blitz. Just how are you supposed to fall asleep when you know high-explosive bombs are raining down over the city? You might wake up with most of your neighbourhood destroyed, friends and family blown to bits. Hell, you might not wake up at all. The whole city must have been sleep-deprived and pretty goddamn miserable.
Faced with that, and against the wishes of the government, many sought sanctuary in the Tube. It might not be particularly comfy bedding down on a platform, but at least you'll survive. Except you might not. In October 1940 a 1400lb bomb slammed into Balham High Road, penetrating the street surface and exploding underground. Many of those sheltering in Balham Tube station were killed instantly by falling debris. They were the lucky ones. A broken water mains then flooded the station, meaning who survived the debris were drowned in pitch darkness "like rats in a cage".
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| The northbound platform at Balham, October 1940 |
Furious protests followed, with demands for deep-level shelters be constructed immediately to prevent disasters like this happening again. The government listened, reversedits policy overnight and ordered the construction of accommodation for 100,000 people in ten shelters: five in north London, five in the south. During construction two shelters were abandoned, one at St Pauls for fear of damaging the cathedral and the other at Oval due to poor ground conditions. The remaining eight opened in 1942, though weren't pressed into full service until the advent of the 'doodlebug' in 1944.
Most have now been sold to private companies, used as archival storage, homes for telecoms equipment or, more recently, hydroponic gardens. Yet the Clapham South shelter, left under the auspices of TfL, remains largely intact, allowing for what feels like a trip back in time.
Essentially the shelter is two long underground tunnels, bisected horizontally to create an upper and lower floor.Triple-tiered bunk beds stretch off into infinity, the guests jammed in with each other like sardines, not exactly the Savoy. It must have been a hell of a weird place to fall asleep, the air filled with a fug of sweat, cigarette smoke and farts, soundtracked by the clickety-clack of passing trains and the muffled thump of bombs far aboveground.
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| A blocked off exit to Clapham South station. |
Then again, if the choice is between that and getting blown to smithereens, then I'll take the tunnel. Things weren't all austerity down here, there was a canteen that was 'off-rationing', allowing for as many meat pies and jam tarts as you could afford. Similarly (and deeply emblematic of how living conditions improved in the postwar period) there were chemical toilets which might have been somewhat of a luxury for those forced to trek to an outhouse at night.
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| A not particularly comfy looking bed. |
Aside from actually sheltering the community, the shelters also functioned as an effective piece of propaganda. Newsreel was shot showcasing their security and safety; a way to reassure Londoners that they have a safe haven and also to stick two fingers up at the Nazis to show that they can't be beaten no matter what hi-ex horrors they toss over the channel.
But the story of the shelter doesn't conclude with Hitler blowing his brains all over a bunker wall. For about a decade afterwards it was used as temporary accommodation; postwar refugees travelling through London; visitors to the 1951's Festival of Britain; and, most fascinatingly, to house those who arrived on HMS Windrush in order to assist with the reconstruction of bombed out Britain. Eventually, after a damaging fire in the Goodge Street shelter, Clapham was mothballed in the 60s and largely remains so to this day.
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| Windrush passengers spending their first few nights deep under London. |
It isn't hard at all to imagine past visitors' reactions to seeing this weird, wonderful and obscure corner of London. The place feels as if it's essentially the same as when war-tired Londoners trooped down to escape the Luftwaffe. I found myself wishing I could spend a night down here, tasting the creosote and plaster tang in the air, and rocked gently to sleep by the rumble of the Northern line meters away.
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| Graffiti by bored Belgians. |
Though places are limited on the Hidden London tours, word is the shelter may be opened to the public in the next few years as a Blitz museum. So watch this space. In the meantime, if you're spending a quiet summer's day dozing on Clapham Common be sure imagine the thousands of people who once huddled in safety deep below your head. Who knows, the way things are going we might be thankful that these bomb shelters remain in working order...
Hidden London tour details here.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
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| Aldwych Station from the Strand (it used to be called 'Strand Station') |
"I have climbed down more ladders to explore the buried town than I have toiled up City staircases" - Walter George Bell, 'Unknown London', (1919)
What goes on under London? It's a compelling mystery. Londoners are a species inclined to the subterranean, ready to scurry underground at the slightest opportunity. Weretreat beneath the soil for any number of reasons, be it to escape from German bombs, to dance the night away in brick-lined underground cellars or to govern the country in times of danger from vast secret Whitehall complexes. But the first thing that comes to mind when you think 'London underground' is of course the Tube. If London was a human body, the Tube would be its circulatory system, the passengers the red blood cells that keep the city's heart beating.
Every Londoner is familiar with how the Tube works, so the notion that there are Tube 'secrets' that only the enlightened know compelling. These range from 'secret' transfer tips to knowing which stations have rivers flowing through them to legends about ghosts haunting platforms. By far the most compelling secrets concern another kind of ghosts, ghost stations. There are a number of these throughout the network, stations closed down as the expected passenger numbers never materialised. It's one of these that I've visited today: the defunct 'Aldwych' tube station.
Aldwych tube station opened as 'Strand' station on 30th November 1907 and closed down about 87 years later on the 30th of September 1994. It was a Piccadilly Line station, a terminus from a spur that extended southwards from Holborn. I work nearby and regularly walk past the entrance, and although Leslie Green's oxblood bricks still stand out most people seem to pay it little attention. Aldwych does have some notoriety though, mainly as most easily accessible 'ghost' on the network. Beginning in 2010 this opening has become an annual event for the London Transport Museum, and tickets sell out fast. I got mine the moment the online shop opened (and promptly crashed).
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| How it appeared on the tube map. |
When we arrive opposite the station we're corralled in a queue and quickly given a health and safety lecture by a Museum employee. Our bags are checked, and after a short wait we're escorted over the road and into the entrance.
Ordinarily, this first contact with the 'backstage scenery' of the Tube would be thrilling, but I have actually been to this top part of the station before. In July 2010 they opened up the ticket hall for an exhibition showing off future Tube development plans. I spent a lunch hour down there poking about. It's changed little since then. It's the little flourishes I enjoy in these old places. The way the ticket counter has aged is somehow church like, as are the confession booth like telephone stands opposite it.
Everyone in the group seems nicely curious and attentive. I even spot one particularly intrepid man entering the women's bathroom clutching his camera, no doubt in search of some snazzy 1900s interior decoration. After a quick run down of the station's history we begin our trek down the winding staircase that leads us to the platforms. There are 160 stairs down, and it's easy to get a bit dizzy as you wind your way around.
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| Entering the station. |
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| Churchy. You can see coin scratches on the counter here. |
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| Round and round we go. |
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| A spooksome lift shaft. |
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| Peeling ceiling (with Transport Museum employee) |
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| View down Platform 1 |
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| These aren't real, but they do set the scene nicely. |
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| Adverts from the future! |
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| View down Platform 2 |
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| Testing tiling. |
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| To save you the difficulty of imagining here is a picture. Looks pretty snug. |
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| A real old advert. Let's see.. Churchill, Dickins, ???, Henry VIII and John Lennon. Any guesses as to who the woman is? |
Tickets are sold out for this year, but if you're feeling lucky you can turn up on the 2nd, 7th, 8th and 9th of December between 10:30 and 15.00 and in the evenings at 17:45 and 18:45 to see if there's any returns, cancellations or no shows.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
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The idea of a ‘secret’ London is a seductive one. Who knows what lurks behind dilapidated Victorian facades, at the end of sinister winding alleyways or tucked away in church crypts? You hear tales of abandoned tube stations, nuclear bunkers under roundsabouts, warrens of government tunnels in Whitehall; another London, off limits and subterranean. Our guide to this mysterious world was Matt Brown, editor of The Londonist, the single most useful website for anyone wanting to know what’s going on in London.
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| 55 Broadway |
Appropriately given the subject matter, the talk was in a secret location: the 10th floor of the Grade I listed headquarters of the London Underground, 55 Broadway. Built in 1929 and designed by architect Charles Holden it sits directly on top of St James Park underground station. There’s an aura of importance to the building, the art deco detailing brings to mind streamlined and retro aerodynamic design, the dawning of the age of mechanised speed. The lobby is filled with awards won by London Underground and there’s a fantastic ticking machine wired into the tube network showing the frequency of the trains rumbling below us. Up on the tenth floor we’re allowed out onto the roof gardens and even though it’s a drizzly winter night the view is pretty stunning. The landmarks of London are laid out like a postcard in front of us: the London Eye, Westminster Cathedral, the BT Tower, St Paul’s Cathedral and their newest sibling, the brightly lit Shard.
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| The new concourse at Kings Cross. |
I was initially a little apprehensive that this talk would essentially be a long list of trivia, a mound of interesting yet disconnected facts. Very quickly I realised this wasn’t going to be the case; Matt’s perspective on the city is that of London as process. This philosophy doesn’t treat the past as simply something to be memorised in a vacuum, but as the fuel that powers and shapes our modern city. He began with a great example of this, explaining how the curve of the new concourse at King’s Cross Station was directly influenced by glacial movements during the last ice age. To summarise; the curve of the concourse derives from the curve of the Great Northern Hotel (in the top right of the image); the curve of the hotel followed the path of Pancras Road; Pancras Road was built to follow the now buried River Fleet and the River Fleet’s course was influenced by glacial movements 10,000 years ago. At this point we should note that the brand new concourse resembles… a glacier!
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| Tranquil. |
During this section of the talk Matt shows us an image of a pastoral St Pancras Old Church. Absolutely nothing about this image screams ‘London’. We see open fields, clear skies, wild woodland – there are men lazily paddling their feet in the River Fleet. Without context you might expect it to be a representation of some sleepy countryside hamlet. But it’s not. I cycle through this pastoral landscape on my way to gigs in Camden. The church is still there, marooned like a galleon frozen in ice, but the city has swallowed up the tranquillity around it. Red bricked tower blocks have replaced the woods and the clear waters of the Fleet are now buried deep underground, a conduit for North London’s excrement. Knowledge like this is a real secret London, landscapes that only exist in the mind, anchored in reality by survivors like the Old Church.
But what of the London that’s been utterly obliterated? Matt shows us his research into the defensive fortifications built to protect London during the Civil War. These were an enormously complex and large-scale construction project of which there is little or no trace. There’s not even any definitive maps of where they might have been, only guesses based on topology, slightly unreliable history books and street names. It’s disconcerting to think that huge things like these forts can not only vanish physically, but mentally too. It’s not like the Civil War was that long ago, relatively speaking. I can walk from my house and look at a city wall the Romans built, so you’d expect there to be some evidence around. Invisible forgotten structures like this are a great reminder of the transience of the city. What appears permanent can be wiped away very quickly by disaster, bombs or the simple and steady march of progress.
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| Where archaeologists think the wall and forts might have been. |
The contrast between what survives and what becomes hopelessly obscure is an interesting and seemingly illogical one. Matt outlines a series of secret disasters and tragedies that pepper the history of London, yet haven’t entered popular consciousness and don’t crop up in history books. These include a great fire on London Bridge in 1212. The bridge at this time had houses on it and when a fire began burning down the great cathedral at Southwark people rushed across to the south side of the bridge to rubberneck. Unfortunately winds carried embers across to the north side, setting the houses aflame there. Everyone on the bridge was now caught between two advancing infernos. An estimated 2,000 people died, the worst single disaster in the history of London. You won’t see any plaques in memorial to this or view any dramatic paintings of it in art galleries. Apparently even in history books about London Bridge there is scarcely a mention.
In a similar, and far more recent vein is a fire in Denmark Street in 1980, where 37 burned to death. Again no marker or memorial, the incident has almost completely disappeared from public consciousness, perhaps due to the fact that those who died were immigrants with few to publically mourn their deaths.
This is pretty miserable stuff, why would events like these be forgotten so readily? It’s hard to ascribe any kind of malice to this amnesia, yet in some cases it’s clear certain people would rather things be forgotten. In 1903 the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum caught fire. 52 female patients died in horrifying circumstances, their charred bodies found huddled together, pressed into corners as they futilely tried to escape the flames. So what of these dank rooms where terrified women gasped their last, desperate, smoke filled breaths? Nowadays you’re likely to find an IKEA sofa, or a huge flatscreen TV in that spot. Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum is now the charmingly named ‘Princess Park Manor’, luxury flats for discerning high flying Londoners. Matt tells us about the ‘history’ section on their (pretty crappy) website, explaining that they have the vaguest possible description of the place, not even bothering to mention that it was once a hospital let alone that it was the site of the worst peacetime fire in London since medieval times. These housing developers would just prefer we all forgot about that nasty business and focus on what’s important about the history of the place, namely that “the corridor that once ran across the width of the building was at one time the longest in Europe”. Wow. Now that’s history you can use!
The contrast to this crushing sense of doom is what’s unexpectedly remembered rather than forgotten. It’s 750AD, and a beautiful sunny day in the countryside that will eventually be north east London. Deep within a field a man looks wearily up from the sun and wipes the sweat from his brow. He thinks for a moment about the flagon of beer waiting for him back home, a reward for a hard day’s work. Buoyed with anticipation he cheerily whips his oxen on; the fields must be ploughed. He doesn’t live a particularly extravagant life, but he’s got his own hard won bit of land to farm and a family to feed. Life is good. There are men like him dotted all over Anglo-Saxon England, all of them fated to be lost to history. But not Mr Wemba.
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| An Anglo-Saxon farmer working his lea. Much like I imagine Mr Wemba may well have done. |
1,250 years later, the same spot. Thousands of drunken England fans stream across the concrete, flags waving, horns tooting, a riot of white and red. As one they chant ‘Wemba-ley Wemba-ley, Wemba-ley!”. This Anglo-Saxon farmer’s name has been passed down through the years, being immortalised in the globally famous ‘Wembley Stadium’. The etymology of place names is always fascinating, but particularly when it reaches back this far. Knowing the secret origins of these places lets you inhabit the past. A bus ride between Peckham and Brixton becomes a quest from a tiny village on the River Peck that ends at the ancient stone of the Saxon Lord Brixi. And then you can pop into the Ritzy for a pint. Reading about the distant past can feel impossibly alien, but secret and obscure knowledge like this underlines the fact that although conditions may be vastly different, we also have much in common with our ancestors.
After Matt had finished his talk he opened the floor to questions, with the caveat that we must all outline our idea of a secret part of London. Everyone had their own favourite spot and it’s uplifting that even in a city that occasionally feels full to bursting point there are still personal and private places. What I realised during this talk is that ‘secret London’ is not about pointing out obscure buildings or being able to list off trivia. It’s about the way that you apply your knowledge of the past to your present. Everyone has their own truly secret London mapped out in their heads. The park bench where you first kissed your partner, the Soho alleyway in which you gracelessly collapsed in a pile of your own vomit or simply the nicest place to get a drink. This concept is perhaps best visualised in Stephen Walter’s “The Island”, an immensely detailed personal map of the city. We all have one of these maps of London in our heads, a patchwork blanket of memories, practical knowledge, romance, history and drama. That’s a real secret London.
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| Stephen Walter's 'The Island' Click for bigger, but not quite big enough. Go and see it somewhere! |
Big thanks to Matt Brown for putting on such a great talk, for the London Transport Museum for helping organise it and to TFL for opening up the 10th floor of 55 Broadway as a venue.
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