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Are you a history buff? A James Bond fanatic? An arts-and-culture aficionado? A lover of drinking in one-of-a-kind bars? All four of those? If so, we’ve got your dream London attraction. It’s called The London Tunnels, and it’s expected to be one of the most significant new attractions to open in the city this side of the millennium.
As the name suggests, The London Tunnels will occupy a series of underground passages. The tunnels were built during WWII to protect Londoners from the Blitz, and they stretch a mile under High Holborn and Chancery Lane. They may be hidden beneath central London’s streets, but they’re pretty huge: the ceilings are so high they could fit a double-decker bus.
The tunnels have been shut since the 1980s and they’re set to soon open to the public as a tourist attraction. With the help of WilkinsonEyre (the architects behind Battersea Power Station’s flashy revamp) London Tunnels CEO Angus Murray plans to open the tunnels up as a part-museum, part-exhibition-space and part-cocktail-bar, and it’s predicted to launch in early 2028.
So, how did we get here? After the war the tunnels were taken over by British Intelligence for its Special Operations Executive office (part of MI6), and the offices were supposedly an inspiration to James Bond creator Ian Fleming and his novels’ Q Branch. In the ’50s, the complex was transformed into the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels, a telephone exchange with the deepest underground bar in any city in the world, built for its 200 staff members. Now, Murray hopes to revive the record-breaking bar while staying faithful to its previous history.
‘When you go down into these tunnels, some 30 meters below London, it's almost impossible to not reflect upon the history that led those tunnels to be built, how they were built and ultimately, the men and women that sacrificed themselves through that process,’ Murray said.
As such, the tunnels won’t be entirely gutted and replaced. Many of the complex’s historic features will be retained, and Murray says that while the attraction will be ‘cool and modern’, it will also be ‘representative of what it would have looked like originally’.
‘There are two big generators that they put in after the war to power the telecommunications exchange,’ Murray explained about the plans. ‘Those pieces of equipment would all be retained – much like what Wilkinson[Eyre] did at Battersea – and people would see this original equipment that was inside the tunnels.’
The £120 million project hopes to feature high-resolution immersive screens, interactive activities, hundreds of speakers and even scent-emitting tech to attract history buffs and tourists alike. Murray expects the attraction to be as impactful as The London Eye, which boasts around 3 million visitors per year. Here’s what current designs look like.
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