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Londoners are suckers for the Underground. Sure, we moan about it constantly, but – like school, marriage and German cooking – if you can just look at it in a slightly different way, it can become magical. Specifically, we get a collective frisson as a city thinking about all the spooky shut-off tube tunnels, disused stations and plentiful ghosts below our feet. To speak to that romantic and spooky appetite, London Transport Museum has just announced a new season of its ever-popular Hidden London tours of unseen parts of the capital’s vast transport network, including some new places they’ve never visited before.
There are in-person and virtual tours available, so even if you live miles from London (or don’t fancy creeping about in a filthy warren), you can still be a tube explorer.
Highlights of the new season include evening tours of Charing Cross and Down Street stations. The Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross have been inoperative since 1999, and since used for lots of film and TV productions. Down Street station, meanwhile, you might not even have heard of. Located in Mayfair, it was shut down way back in 1932 because of low passenger numbers (locals presumably all travelled by Rolls-Royce). In WWII, it was used as an air raid shelter and, intriguingly, was used by Winston Churchill during the Blitz.
Another perennial favourite are the tours of Aldwych tube station on the Strand near Somerset House, and there are also in-person tours of Shepherd’s Bush station’s hidden nooks and crannies, and the same at Euston.
Virtual tours allow visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the new Elizabeth line stations at Tottenham Court Road and Liverpool Street, as well as a look at the closed Kingsway areas of Holborn.
So, you can spend a whole lot more time on the tube, if you fancy it. Do – it’s really worth it. But book soon – these tours always sell out.
Find more details of London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ tours and book places here.
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