Surprises beneath the traffic in Britain's capital
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from July 2000.
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A city is like a body: Its inner workings are under the skin. London below the surface is a web of tunnels - 5,900 miles of sewers to carry away the waste of 8 million inhabitants, tunnels to whisk commuters from home to work and back, tunnels to protect the city's nerve centre from attack.
Most of us, visitors and Londoners alike, slip into a commuter daze upon descending into London's subway system, the Underground. But keep your eyes open and underground London reveals surprises and secrets - nuggets of history, outcrops of beauty, even works of art.
"London is a remarkably hollow city," says Mike Ashworth, assistant curator of the London Transport Museum. "A lot goes on underground."
Occasionally, this underground world and the daylight world meet, most famously during World War II, when thousands of Londoners sheltered from the Blitz in the stations of the Tube and even the government took refuge underground. But for the most part, the subterranean world is ignored, left to a small army of sewage and subway workers, and to professionals like Ashworth.
"Listen," says Ashworth, breathing in the dank, cool air 100 feet below the packed traffic of central London. "You're in the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world, and it's dead silent."
He is standing in Aldwych, one of more than 30 unused stations on the London Underground network; dusty, abandoned places that preserve traces of the art, architecture and everyday life of previous generations.
Ashworth points out details of the station, opened in 1907 and closed in bits and pieces until 1994 - the original Otis elevators, the Royal Doulton rails, the bright '60s posters for a department store advertising "lipstick, lemonade, sausage rolls, petticoats".
He walks down a tunnel in which, during World War II, the Elgin Marbles were stored, to keep them safe from German bombs. Now, the floor is dotted with glitter leftover from the shooting of a music video by The Prodigy.
The Underground is the world's oldest underground railway - the first steam-powered trains began to run in 1863 and the first to go electric, in 1890. The network of tunnels transformed the city, pushing out through the greenbelt in the first decades of the 20th century and leaving commuter suburbs in its wake.
For a primer on Underground history, head to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, where attractive, interactive displays explain all you need to know about rolling stock and tunnelling techniques. Then hop on the Underground and look around.
Though the Underground system was built piecemeal by private companies, its originators soon realised the value of brand identity and strong design. The ingeniously simplified Tube map, designed by Harry Beck in the 1930s, is regarded as a masterpiece, and the system's posters are famous.
The Transport Museum's gift shop does a brisk trade in them, as well as in mugs, T-shirts, key chains and boxer shorts emblazoned with the Underground's famous roundel logo. The Underground even has its own specially commissioned typeface - Johnson - for its signs.
The Tube also has its own distinctive architectural styles. Many of the older stations are remarkably elegant. For a glimpse of Victoriana, check out Baker Street, where several platforms have been restored to their 1863 appearance, complete with exposed brick and tiled shopfronts. Every visitor to London likely will have seen at least one of the stations designed by Leslie Green at the turn of the last century, with their cream-tiled interiors, art nouveau touches and exteriors of oxblood-coloured terra-cotta. In the expanding suburbs, 1930s stations such as Southgate and Arnos Grove were designed by the architect Charles Holden in a bold modernist idiom that puts some viewers in mind of Mussolini's Italy.
Not everything on the Underground is a joy. Some of the 1960s stations, in particular, represent what Peter Woods, Ashworth's colleague at the Transport Museum, calls "the public lavatory school of architecture".
But with the Jubilee Line Extension, opened late last year, Underground architecture has regained some of its joie de vivre. Each station was designed by a different architect, and stops such as the Norman Foster-designed Canary Wharf - with its soaring glass canopy, vast concrete columns and light-filled interior - explode the constricting tunnels of standard Underground architecture.
The Underground is not all about moving people from A to B. In times of crisis, the tunnels have found other uses. "At the beginning of World War II, London Transport was very nervous about allowing people down on to the platforms to shelter," Woods said. "They were forced by the Metropolitan Police and public pressure to allow people in. They started selling shelter tickets for a penny or tuppence, and people slept down on the platforms. "There were in later years things like bunk beds, toilets, lending libraries," he said. "The last train of the night was a refreshment special, selling sticky buns and cocoa and tea, just to keep people going."
It was not only civilians who were sheltered in the tunnels. American GIs were billeted in the Goodge Street station on Tottenham Court Road, and an underground labyrinth across the street - the top of its shaft still visible in Chenies Street - was home to Dwight D. Eisenhower's European command.
"There was actually a door on the end of the CONT'D ON PAGE B3 train platform through which you could access the bunker," Woods said. "The American service personnel were given orders that should anybody go through that door, they were to shoot them." German bombs forced British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his government underground as well. The Cabinet War Rooms under Whitehall have been preserved as a museum, with the map room, Cabinet meeting room, Churchill's bedroom and the trans-Atlantic telephone room all remaining as they looked during the war.
A rawer sense of history can be gained at Down Street Tube station, which can be visited on occasional - and extremely popular - guided tours run by the London Transport Museum. A little-used station on the Piccadilly Line between Green Park and Hyde Park Corner, Down Street was closed in 1932. During the war, it was the command bunker of the Railway Executive Committee - the body that oversaw train transport in wartime Britain - and it was used as a shelter by Churchill while the Cabinet War Rooms were being completed.
It is a grubby place, encrusted in soot and painted over in slate grey sometime after the war. But history feels alive. You can see the steel and concrete cap, 8 feet thick, built over the elevator shaft to stop bombs falling through, and the warren of tiny rooms in which between 50 and 80 people worked and slept as trains roared by inches away. There is a disintegrating telephone switchboard, a sink from the tiny kitchen and the converted tunnel in which Churchill met with his chiefs of staff, the wallpaper peeling from the walls of the officers' quarters.
"We get a mixture of people on these tours," Ashworth said. "Obviously, there's the genuine transport enthusiast, but a lot are people who just want to know what's behind that door. There's a natural aura of secrecy: It's deep, it's dark and it's underground."
Some of London's underground spaces cling to that air of secrecy. There are Cold War tunnels no one wants to talk about, such as the anti-aircraft command centre under Brompton Road station over which the government retains control to this day. Or the network of bunkers under central London, designed to withstand a nuclear attack, visible now as glimpses of ventilation shafts behind barbed wire.
There are new secrets, too. Many of London's disused tunnels now serve as what Mark Wilton-Steer, marketing director of Recall Total Information Management, calls "secure underground storage centres".
Underground London continues to attract visionaries, too people such as Candid Arts Trust, an arts-education group that has transformed a platform at Gloucester Road station into a gallery showcasing work by young artists.
"We want to give passengers a more creative journey to and from work," says Candid Arts' Maria Avino. "We want to challenge the passenger, too." Ashworth has a similar philosophy.
"We like the chance to take people in a subtly different way to somewhere they go everyday," he says. "So much of the history of London transport, and therefore of London, is still out there." On the Net: London Transport Museum: http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk.
Cabinet War Rooms: http://www.iwm.org.uk/cabinet.htm.
Candid Arts Trust: http://www.candidarts.com If you want to explore the London Underground The Underground: The London Underground system is divided into six concentric zones. Fares start at £1.50 (US$2.25) for Zone 1, which takes in most of central London, and rise to £3.50 (US$5.25) for a six-zone ticket.
Free copies of Harry Beck's famous Underground map are available from most stations. London Transport Museum: Located in Covent Garden Piazza, with Covent Garden the nearest Underground station (phone: 44-20-7836-8557). Open daily from 10am-6pm, Fridays 11am-6pm. Admission is £5.50 (US$8.25) for adults; seniors/students/children under 15, £2.95 (US$4.45); children under 5 admitted free.
The Museum runs occasional tours of Aldwych, Downing Street and other disused stations. Apply in writing to: Marketing Department, London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 7BB.
Information on scheduled tours and talks can be found on the London Transport Museum Web site (http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk) - which features virtual tours of Aldwych and Down Street - or by calling the Resource Centre at 44-20-7379-6344. Cabinet War Rooms: Located at Clive Steps, King Charles Street, with Westminster or St. James's Park the nearest Underground stations (phone: 44-20-7930-6961). Open daily 9.30am-6pm (from 10am 1 October-31 March). Admission is £5 (US$7.50), seniors/students, £3.60 (US$5.40); children under 16 free. A disused Holborn underground sign lays in a tunnel at Aldwych station, which has been closed since 1994.
A tunnel near the station housed the Elgin Marbles during World War II to keep them safe from German bombs, more recently it was used to film a music video for the band, The Prodigy. Photo: AP
