Entertainment For Lively Minds
Secret Britain
Posted by David Wright on 2 August 2011 - 8:33pm.
I read a recent newspaper article, claiming that the London Underground are planning to reopen certain "ghost stations". I took the above picture on a recent stroll along the Strand to The Coal Hole pub. It will be a familar sight to members of the London Massive, but I have a strange fascination for these ghost stations and would welcome any pointers for other ghost stations, when I return to the capitol in a few weeks. I was also fascinated to learn about the underground post office railway, through the Word's Something For The Weekend e-mail a few months back.
Any other stories/ pictures of abandoned places, tunnels, from your hometown, would be most welcome.
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Nice picture, David
That's Aldwych! I remember they closed it down around the end of my time at college, and unless I'm having some nightmare attack of amnesia, there was this brief time window where you could still physically get into it even though hardly any trains were running. It was spooky as get out.
I have a friend who now lives in the US and is a great fan of all things vaguely Gothic - when she was visiting, I tried to take her there to see it but they'd shut it all up by then.
God, I hope the article you read was right - I'd love to see some of these places open up and get busy with the camera.
Spooky
Thanks, I think they are planning to reopen some stations as shopping arcades etc, but you're right, I'd kind of love to look around some of these abandoned stations, fascinating stuff for sure. I think there is a side entrance to Aldwych as well. I believe I walked past it on the way up from the Thames, but I could be mistaken. I still, frequently get lost in London, just when I think I'm starting to become more familar with parts of the old smoke.
Talking of getting lost in big cities...
...the whole of the time I lived in Newcastle there were green hoardings everywhere concealing the building of the Metro, just before I left they started to take them all down and I felt like I was in a different city - I realised I had used them all as landmarks to find my way around.
I hadn't heard
that, however if I can make a suggestion. Come down/up to London for the Open House weekend on Sept 17/18th when a lot of buildings are open to the public and you get the chance to visit a lot of great places. If memory serves, they have had the kind of places that might interest you in the past. So well worth checking out and log onto their website which I believe is www.open-city.org.uk, programme should be out next week.
Try
Derelictlondon.com great site
Thanks a lot Clive....
There was a week wasted.
Excellent post.
Underground Manchester
Here is a BBC Manchester feature on such a topic. I am familiar with the hidden canal that travelled from the Rochdale Canal, near the Bridgewater Hall, to the River Irwell near Granada Studios. Part of it is still there. I have been down the tunnel that goes from G-MEX to Deansgate. That part of the canal was filled in and was used as an air raid shelter during WW2. I went exploring with chaps from the Hacienda who would have loved to host a club night down there.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/content/articles/2009/01/16/north_west_s1...
Canal
Had a look at this afternoon during a quiet moment in the office. I'm envious, you have actually explored the place!! Cheers for posting the link.
Although not a Londoner, I think this site is fascinating
http://underground-history.co.uk/front.php
If we're going to use Lord Grosvenor's rules ...
... may I suggest the Clarence House variant, which makes main line stations wild?
If so ..... my contribution ... Mornington Crescent.
Oh ... it's open again?
This might be what you're looking for...
http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/
I love all this stuff....
Next to this site it's my biggest work distraction....
Try www.abandonedstations.org.uk
Read underground London by Stephen Smith
And also check out www.subbrit.org.uk for more general underground info including sites across the UK. If you can come to London on open house weekend you could do worse than the barking outfall sewer, believe me, much better than it sounds and a fascinating insight into the work of Bazalgette and the London ring main ( who knew for example that the decorative piece of art which looks like a clear tube with a fancy water display inside on chiswick roundabout is actually a device to allow engineers a quick visual on pressures in the ring main!
I'll get me anorak.
Underground Post Office Railway
I've been down to the undergound Post Office railway. I was taken down there quite a few years ago by a Post Office account manager when he was trying to get our business. Sort of like a miniature version of the normal underground, but much cleaner and quieter. Basically you could get across London in about 20 minutes versus well over an hour above ground.
Down Street is my favourite
Opened in error. It was soon realised that people who lived between Piccadilly and Park Lane didn't use the tube, they had staff who did that.
Robert Elms' BBC London programme is brilliant for stuff on forgotten Underground London.
At the other extreme
was York Road.
It was (is) situated between Kings Cross and Caledonian Road on the Piccadilly Line. You can glimpse the darkened platforms as the tube rushes through.
However it closed because the locals were too poor to be able to use the tube.
Poor Locals
I'll keep an eye out for this when I'm next on the line, interesting stuff. "You can glimpse the darkened platforms as the tube rushes through"-sounds like a great lyric.
Thanks to one and all for all the other links posted as well, some fascinating reading, before I hit the pillow tonight.
This station is opposite the new St Martins art college
Might be a lot more people in that area one it's opened and worth re-opening it
I'm pretty sure
Wood Lane was once an Underground station.
It was
Until quite recently the facade could still be seen but I think it has gone now since the redevelopement that went along with Westerfields shopping centre.
Ipswich Underground Railway
Ipswich Underground Railway
Little survives today of the former Ipswich Underground Railway, but once its tunnels and platforms thronged with Ipswich people travelling beneath the streets of their proud town. Today, the tunnels are filled in and the stations have found other uses, but still the memories remain. This site is an attempt to record as much evidence as possible of those days, before they disappear for ever.
http://www.simonknott.co.uk/ipswichunderground.htm
Damn
That's where we buried Jim Magilton, Joe Royal and Roy Keane.
The original story
was posted April 1st 2007. One of the better ones though, it gets sillier the more you think about it (Stalin funding the building of an underground railway in Suffolk etc)
It helps greatly
if you live here and recognise the buildings, although I am assured that the nightclub that used to be in the roundabout opposite the Willis building remains as sealed the week it went bust and remains to be discovered by future generations as an example of late eighties nightclub chic. Or, obviously, you can go to Jokers in Stowmarket.
British Museum Station
It may be a load of old hokum but this story put the willies up me:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/greater-london/hauntings/brit...
David Rothon posted this a year or so back...
A selection of 1950s posters unearthed at Notting Hill tube station.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/sets/72157624079183751/
Isn't There a 'secret network of trains
linking No.10, Buckingham Palace, The House of Commons and an exit route out into the country? I seem to remember hearing about this years ago.
Or maybe that was just the pot and acid.
This has been covered several times
by Robert Elms. No one has proved it but there are certainly lots of tunnels under Whitehall and he once had a caller who claimed to have seen a soldier in an open doorway in the tunnel under Charing Cross station (the theory being that he was guarding a secret tunnel to Buckingham Palace). There are also some unexplained tunnels out to the north (St Johns Wood? I forget I'm afraid)
Don't think there's trains....
But I do believe there is a foot tunnel from Buck' palace to Victoria station for emergency evacuation. There are also certainly tunnels all under Whitehall, now used by BT and other service providers (although I am sure some are still in government hands), one access door to the tunnels can be seen anytime, just walk down the steps from Waterloo Place to The Mall and as you come to the bottom of the steps to your left is the side wall of the ICA and to you right another White wall with a heavy wooden door, through which lies underground Whitehall!
Oh and yes, Elmsies show is great for this kind of stuff.
Always worth a look
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/
28 Days Later - an Urban Exploration forum. Tunnels, drains, ruins, all sorts of places.
Pssst
...I may just happen to work for the railway that operates in London. I've been to some of the disused places and they are extremely spooky. However what's spookier is the disused parts of 'live' stations, old train and foot tunnels, funny little rooms. Walking from a foot tunnel that is busy with passengers, going through a door and finding yourself in empty tunnels that haven't seen passengers for years, if not ever can give you the creeps. And sound goes a little strange in there, the acoustics can go weird.
'the distant echo of faraway voices boarding faraway trains' indeed
I guess you will have seen
I guess you will have seen the programme on Channel 4 a few years ago, about the various haunted stations on the Underground? Have you ever seen, or felt a presence whilst working underground!?
No
but I've known a few people who were working nights and claim to have seen and heard weird things, especially at Bank which was hit quite badly in the Blitz.
Bank
It was an interesting programme, I'll try and post a clip later on this evening. I think Bank station was featured on the programme.
Spirits Of The Tube
This maybe of interest, although I appreciate it's a slight deflection from my original post.
I love all this stuff too
and am looking forward to following the links tomorrow. What is it about this kind of thing that resonates with so many of us?
I think it's
the fact that in somewhere as busy and and hectic as London or Manchester or any other major city there is still the mysterious and the unseen. The stuff we take for granted that makes Cities 'work' without us needing to be concerned about it, and strange forgotten relics that are all around us and are full of "ghosts"..something like that anyway. Combine that with trains and railways and yr pressing all my inner nerd buttons!
My father was a Clergyman, and we lived in numerous Vicarages over the years one or two of which were quite spooky. The rumour was that all churches had a secret tunnel which would enable the clergy to pass unhindered from Vicarage to Church (for reasons unclear). We thought we found one once but turned out to be a ventilation shaft from the cellar..but we had fun pretending!
Also
I think the one's that are the most interesting are those that have been closed up and just left alone like a time capsule. I was even looking at the posters up in (temporarily) closed Northern Line Platform of Tottenham Court Road station last week as they're not current. The idea of a time machine fascinates a lot of us, I would love to walk down a 1960's high street for example but that's not possible so this is the next best thing.
Time Machines
This comment resonates with me a lot.
Can I recommend Replay by Ken Grimwood.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Replay-Fantasy-Masterworks-Ken-Grimwood/dp/05750...
It'll not be the finest written masterpeiece you ever read, but the story line is of a man who wakes up back in his college room aged 18 and relives his life over and over again (a bit like Groundhog Day but with full lives). Every replay is different, and it's fascinating to think what you would do in such circumstances were they possible.
It's clear that you'd have to memorise a number of key events to bet on (horses, shares etc) to give yourself free money, but then what....
I still think in quiet moments what I'd want to revisit - football matches, concerts and the like....
This all sounds fascinating, even to a non-Londoner...
...I think anyone who enjoys the above stuff - old London, disused stuff, underground/lost tunnels/rivers/bits of weird history - would like the Bryant & May 'Peculiar Crimes Unit' novels by Christopher Fowler. I do, anyway.
Re-reading
I'm reading them through again right now as it goes. Seconded.
Bryant and May
Wonderful books!
Here's another. A trip along the River Fleet.
Some great photos here of some engineering and architecture that few will ever see.
http://undercitylondonstories.blogspot.com/2009/03/london-underground-ri...
Ghost Stations...
The infamous Stockport to Stalybridge line, has two stations Denton and Reddish South. The line only sees occasional goods traffic and diverted trains but Both stations are officially 'open'. There is a train service, but it consists of only one train a week on a Friday morning and it only operates in one direction. So it's possible to get from Denton to Stalybridge once a week, but impossible to get a return journey back. It's known as a 'Parliamentary Service' whereby the train company operates the minimum possible service to keep the station open on the basis that it's far cheaper to do that than to go through the process of consultation and so forth to officially close the station.
Here is a picture, I've never tried to catch a train from there but at least there is somewhere to sit and wait..and wait...and wait. Stops on request only apparently!
Mind The Crowds
Interesting stuff, I believe I heard a Radio 4 programme on the same subject matter a while ago. You'd hardly think it was worth keeping the station open, but I'm glad it is.
The 'Parliamentary' via Denton
Word subscribers will be delighted to know that amongst their number is a train driver who works this route and very satisfying it is too, providing this essential public service i.e. maintaining England's hard won quirkiness. They will be even more delighted to learn that Network Rail swept Reddish South and Denton platforms clear of snow all last winter, and not just on Fridays.
Nowadays the line has a kind of cult status among the 'bashers' of the enthusiast community who like to ride the rails - the railway equivalent of a Dylan completist. They are far more likely to catch the train than a local. And lovely people they are too. People like them put together
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/sites.shtml
which will quite likely lead you to the former underground station in Liverpool at Dingle
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/l/liverpool_overhead_railway/in...
I recently had to attend a meeting
in Reddish, just opposite Reddish South Station. I'll go by train, I thought, until I realised that I would have had to set off 3 days previously.
This is a great site
For all kinds of abandoned cityscapes
http://www.sleepycity.net/
'Tis indeed
I think I was directed towards it in a thread many moons ago.
I just bought Peter Ackroyd's 'London Under'...
although I haven't read it yet. It would seem to fit the bill in terms of this thread.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/London-Under-Peter-Ackroyd/dp/0701169915/ref=sr_...
Now If You're Talkiing Tunnels
This is a bizarre tale - in that there was a guy in the 1800's who during a time of high unemployment employed bricklayers etc to build an elaborate tunnel system to keep their trade alive. Some have been reopened but others are still to be dscovered -www.williamsontunnels.com/faq.htm
Going Underground
Could sit here all day reading this stuff, but work beckons. This may just be a rumour, but apparently Leeds was once a contender for an underground railway. I've heard a story that there is the start of an underground station, underneath the John Lewis Store next to St John's shopping arcade, but it was never finished.
Never knew about Ipswich's Underground system.
Abandoned luncheonette
I'm pretty sure I heard on a Robert Elms GLR show some years ago that somewhere around Marble Arch is an abandoned underground shopping centre built in the 1970s but quickly shut down. I've never been able to corroborate this story.
Anyone know? Fascinating if true.
I love tunnels me
I think it's a male thing.
I used to work at University College London and there were loads of tunnels connecting various buildings, which were also highly useful as shortcuts for getting to other bits of Bloomsbury.
I remember when Saddam Hussein was captured and there were reports that he'd built an extensive tunnel network in Baghdad. I remember rubbing my chin, speculating that I'd do exactly the same thing if I were a despot.
"I love tunnels me"
Can I introduce you to my friend Dr Freud? Brookster, Sigmund, Sigmund, Brookster...
Good god
If your armchair psychoanalysis is correct, he might out me as a heterosexual man
underground/overground...
...it's not well known to the public at large but there are apparently secret tunnels under a public park in the Wimbledon area, revealed - in a remarkable series of 5 minute documentaries broadcast in the '70s - to be inhabited by a family of benign, furry individuals otherwise unknown to science and defined by big noses and an unusual propensity towards cleanliness.
It's not known what happened to the tunnels, but the documentaries are still enjoyable to this day and one of the family - Barrington - was briefly notable as drummer with the Rutles.
I've been down those tunnels
sometime in the mid-70s. They opened the tunnels to the public in Cannizaro Park and I went, met Orinoco.
Then went home, had an ice-cream and watched Dr Who and the Sea Devils on the telly.
Perfectly normal.
The London Nobody Knows
by Geoffrey Fletcher. Very old now (40 years?) - who ain't you may say? - but absolutely fascinating and now, of course, a poignant nostalgia-fest at many sites. Sort of combination quest/pilgrimage and love-letter to London and its quaint corners.
Secret Garden
This picture is the nearest thing I've come to discovering a secret tunnel in Scarborough. The tunnel pictured runs from a garden, situated in a large Victorian house on the South Cliff. It runs beneath a road and ends up in the Italian gardens, which overlook the South Bay. The actual garden entrance is hard to find, as the tunnel entrance is situated in a secret garden within the Italian Gardens. In Victorian times, I guess the owners of the house, would use the tunnel so they could access their own private garden discreetly and away from prying eyes. The entrance to the tunnel from the house is accessed at the front of the house by staircase. The tunnel entrance has been broken by vandals (not me I might add). I've ventured up some of the tunnel, but not into the garden house of course!
This seems an appropriate track:
And the greatest ever bit of Urban Exploration..
The old Niagara Falls power station tailrace which discharged into the back of the falls. This is a proper jaw-dropper.
http://www.sleepycity.net/posts/67/DIY_Supervillain_Hideout
Bloody hell, that is amazing.
...and just a little insane.
Good to see that the sprit of the UK inkies isn't dead when someone can write this:
Great Stuff
I agree, what an amazing site, I never knew of its existence. Brilliant quote as well, thanks for both the above two posts!
The Prodigy's
Firestarter video was filmed in a disused Underground tunnel in Aldwych.
(Prodigy - Firestarter)
On a more northern note David had you heard of the disused underground railway tunnel at Harrogate?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/content/articles/2008/02/07/harrogat...
And finally in the Midlands both Nottingham and Derby have underground tunnels with Most Haunted star Richard Felix originally touring the Derby tunnels as part of his Ghost Walks. He was invited to join the Most Haunted team after the team met him on a tour of Derby Gaol.
Cheers
Thanks for the link, I'll have a look at that. I know Harrogate quite well, but hadn't heard about this. Many thanks for the link.
Actually…
Actually there's not one but two abandoned railway tunnels running under Harrogate.
In addition to the one mentioned above, there's also the tunnel of the narrow gauge gasworks light railway, which ran from the Bilton junction to the gasworks on the northern side of town until the mid 1950s. One of the tunnel entrances can still be seen, residing in someone's back garden.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/2662159583/
Brill
Fascinating picture, wish I had a tunnel like that in my garden!
Box Tunnel
somewhere under Wiltshire near an RAF Base. Rumour had it this contained a secret area off it which housed 'The Strategic Reserve' a load of Steam Engines kept in service long into the 1970s and 80s to be used in event of War or an Oil Shortage.....
I live not far from there
There's a lot of underground stuff around Box and Corsham, old quarry holes and military tunnels/installations. There's now a big wine cellar place down underground
http://www.octavianvaults.co.uk/index.aspx
And there's also one area under there that was filled with concrete to stop the whole lot caving in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2005/12/14/burlington_nu...
http://www.mybrunel.co.uk/tunnels/boxhill/
The entrance is through a tunnel immediately adjacent
to the eastern portal of Brunel's Box Tunnel. It's very overgrown but is still there today and visible from westbound trains.
Then and now pictures at http://www.monkton-farleigh.co.uk/sc_tunnelquarry46.htm and http://www.monkton-farleigh.co.uk/sc_tunnelquarry49.htm
The book 'Secret Underground City' by Nick McCamley has lots of photographs/plans etc including of the railway goods depot inside the tunnel.
Lots about the Corsham bunker in here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141044691/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_r...
Peter Hennessy's book about the Whitehall approach to the Cold War, based on official archives. Its utterly terrifying and its even more surreal to think of some of it now being posh wine cellars
Liverpool Overhead Railway
Not underground, I know, but there are still some fantastically preserved bridges and walkways around some of the parks.
Seemed to be a great little system, sort of a proto-DLR, any idea why it floundered?
Too much backlog of maintenance and repairs after the war
together with the decline of the docks in general I think.
London films
This thread triggered a memory of a film titled 'Hidden City' made for Channel 4 in 1988, with Charles Dance. A fictional piece, but full of references to 'secret London'.
This site is an excellent source about London films, including the aforementioned 'The London Nobody Knows' and other fine films such as 'Hue & Cry' and 'Pool of London'.
http://www.fictionalcities.co.uk/londonfilms.htm
'Hue & Cry'...
...brilliant stuff! The first Ealing Comedy, at least in retrospect - and a dazzling turn from Alastair Sim...
See also 'London Belongs To Me'...
Just remembered,
if you ever happen to go to Vienna, you should do a Third Man tour which takes you on a tour of the sewers. When I did it, they couldn't offer the full tour but it was still fascinating and well done. Think they also do sewer tours in Paris as well, certainly did it a long time back.
In Jerusalem
You used to be able to walk the length of the water conduit that was built from the outside of the city to provide water under siege conditions.
In Chichester...
You still can (or could when I was a kid).
At one point it splits in half, and two tunnels run in parallel. At that point you'd go in a tunnel each, then peg it to the end of your tunnel, back into your mate's one to lie in wait...
Underground street in Southport
http://www.southportfriends.co.uk/forums/past-to-present/definitive-nevill-street-'subway'/
Check the above link for extensive details
Edinburgh's Wild West
Above ground but you really don't expect this in Morningside.
http://www.edinburghspotlight.com/2010/06/review-wild-west-edinburgh-mor...
Elucidation
'Beneath the city streets' Peter Laurie (Pan) - out of print, but worth tracking down explains exactly what the mass of tunnels under Westminster, Holborn etc were for (and once got me arrested by Special Branch, but I digress...)
'Hidden City' the 1980s Channel 4 movie - partly set in the Kingsway tram tunnel - was one of Poliakoff's earlier works
In case it isn't obvious the history of the Ipswich underground (mentioned above) is a particularly elegant and meticulous scam which fooled a number of mainstream media who ran it as fact
Ghost Train
I've been researching old abandoned gothic looking buildings for a video shoot and came across this place which blew my mind today
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_railway_station
apparently it was a station built entirely to cart the recently deceased out of London to a less crowded cemetery near Woking... as London's population doubled and exhuming and re-burying people was getting quite tiresome... Was mostly destroyed in the blitz and never rebuilt but the 1st class entrance/ offices are still there.
sounds like an unwritten Tom Waits song idea to me...
Check out Andrew Martin's
Check out Andrew Martin's excellent fact-based fiction 'The Necropolis Railway'
Haven't got anything sensible to add
just wanted to say great thread, enjoyed reading it all!
another site for this sort of thing
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=41327
It's not so secret anymore
but the Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear bunker is a fantastic glimpse into Cold War politics. It's a truly frightening and fascinating place, well worth a visit if you find yourself in the area.
http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/
I was there about a month ago
Even people who live around here don't bother going becuase they assume it is something the size of a domestic air-raid shelter, rather than a whole office block underground, where 600 people would have lived and worked. We didn't hang around for lunch in the canteen at the end of the route as I was finding the place too scary and oppressive after a couple of hours, never mind the months that anyone who used it in a nuclear attack would have had to withstand.
Another villain's lair under Ben Cruachan...
http://guide.visitscotland.com/vs/guide/5,en,SCH1/objectId,SIG57966Svs,c...