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The London deep-level shelters are eight deep-level air-raid shelters that were built under London Underground stations during World War II.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2012) |
The London deep-level shelters are eight deep-level air-raid shelters that were built under London Underground stations during World War II.
Each shelter consists of a pair of parallel tunnels 16 feet 6 inches (5.03 m) in diameter and 1,200 feet (370 m) long. Each tunnel is subdivided into two decks, and each shelter was designed to hold up to 8,000 people. It was planned that after the war the shelters would be used as part of new express tube lines paralleling parts of the existing Northern and Central lines. Existing tube lines typically had 12-foot-2.5-inch (3.72 m) diameter running tunnels and about 21 feet (6.4 m) at stations; thus the shelter tunnels would not have been suitable as platform tunnels and were constructed at stations the new lines would have bypassed. However, they would have been suitable as running tunnels for main-line size trains. (One existing tube, the Northern City Line opened in 1904, used a similar size of tunnel for this reason, although in fact main-line trains did not use it until 1976.)
Ten shelters were originally planned, holding 100,000 people — 10,000 in each shelter. However, the final capacity was around 8,000 people in each shelter, and only eight were completed: at Chancery Lane station on the Central line and Belsize Park, Camden Town, Goodge Street, Stockwell, Clapham North, Clapham Common, and Clapham South on the Northern line. The other two were to be at St Paul's station on the Central line, which was not built because of concerns about the stability of the buildings above, and at Oval station on the Northern line, not built because of difficult ground conditions encountered as the work started. The working shaft for the shelter at Oval now functions as a ventilation shaft for the station. [1]
The shelters were started in 1940 during the Blitz in response to public demand to shelter in the London Underground stations. However, they were not completed until 1942 after the Blitz was over, so they were initially all used by the government, but as bombing intensified five of them were opened to the public in 1944: Stockwell, Clapham North, Camden Town, Belsize Park and Clapham South. The Goodge Street shelter was used by General Eisenhower, and the Chancery Lane shelter was used as a communications centre.
After the war, the Goodge Street shelter continued to be used by the army until a fire on the night of 21 May 1956, after which the government decided the shelters were not suitable for use by large numbers of the public or military. [2] The Chancery Lane shelter was converted into Kingsway telephone exchange. [3]
In 1948 the Clapham South shelter was used to house 200 of the first immigrants from the West Indies who had arrived on the HMT Empire Windrush for four weeks until they found their own accommodation. In 1951, it became the Festival Hotel providing cheap stay for visitors to the Festival of Britain, but was closed after the aforementioned fire in the Goodge Street shelter. The shelter was used for archival storage for some years, but is now a Grade II listed building with pre-booked tours arranged by the London Transport Museum via its "Hidden London" programme. [4]
All the shelters, with the exception of Chancery Lane, were sold by the government to Transport for London in 1998. The Clapham Common shelter was leased in 2014 by the Zero Carbon Food company, who use the shelter as a hydroponic farm. [5] [6]
The Goodge Street shelter appeared in studio mock-up form in the 1968 BBC Doctor Who story The Web of Fear . The surface entrance to the Goodge Street shelter appears as itself in the 1988 feature film Hidden City , written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, although interiors were actually shot at Clapham South.
The Camden Town shelter was used to represent parts of Oval tube station in the 1976 two-part story The Lights of London in the BBC television series Survivors . The director of the second episode was Pennant Roberts, who subsequently directed the 1977 Doctor Who story The Sun Makers , in which the same shelter was used for scenes set in tunnels under Pluto. Roberts subsequently worked on the BBC series Blake's 7 , in which the shelter was used for the interior of the titular artificial planet in the 1980 story Ultraworld, although the episode itself was directed by Vere Lorrimer. The shelter was also used to represent parts of a secret underground facility in the vicinity of Down Street tube station in the 2005 feature film Creep .
Reference is a made to a fictional deep-level air-raid shelter at Holland Park tube station in Ben Aaronovitch’s novel Whispers Under Ground, third in the Rivers of London series.
In the penultimate mission of the video game Watch Dogs: Legion , the Stockwell deep-level shelter is featured as the hideout of the main antagonist, Zero Day.
The Kingsway Telephone Exchange features prominently in the early part of the apocalyptic horror novel Domain (1984) by British author James Herbert.
The Northern line is a London Underground line that runs from North London to South London. It is printed in black on the Tube map. The Northern line is unique on the Underground network in having two different routes through central London, two southern branches and two northern branches. Despite its name, it does not serve the northernmost stations on the Underground, though it does serve the southernmost station at Morden, the terminus of one of the two southern branches.
Stockwell is a district located in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. It is situated 2.4 miles (3.9 km) south of Charing Cross.
Subterranean London refers to a number of subterranean structures that lie beneath London. The city has been occupied by humans for two millennia. Over time, the capital has acquired a vast number of these structures and spaces, often as a result of war and conflict.
Oval is a London Underground station in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is on the Northern line between Kennington and Stockwell stations and is in Travelcard Zone 2. It opened on 18 December 1890 as part of the City and South London Railway and is named after The Oval cricket ground, which it serves.
Holborn is a London Underground station in Holborn, Central London, located at the junction of High Holborn and Kingsway. It is served by the Central and Piccadilly lines. On the Central line the station is between Tottenham Court Road and Chancery Lane stations; on the Piccadilly line it is between Covent Garden and Russell Square and is in Travelcard Zone 1. Close by are the British Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury Square, London School of Economics and Sir John Soane's Museum.
Camden Town is a London Underground station on the Northern line. It is a major junction for the line, as it is where the Edgware and High Barnet branches merge from the north, and is also where they split to the south into the Bank and Charing Cross branches for the journey through Central London. It is particularly busy with visitors to the Camden markets at weekends, and, until 2019, was exit-only on Sundays to prevent overcrowding.
British Museum was a station on the London Underground, located in Holborn, central London. It was latterly served by the Central line and took its name from the nearby British Museum in Great Russell Street.
Highgate is a London Underground station and former railway station in Archway Road, in the London Borough of Haringey in north London. The station takes its name from nearby Highgate Village. It is on the High Barnet branch of the Northern line, between East Finchley and Archway stations, and is in Travelcard Zone 3.
Elephant & Castle is a London Underground station in the London Borough of Southwark in south London. It is on the Bank branch of the Northern line between Kennington and Borough stations, and is the southern terminus of the Bakerloo line, the next station being Lambeth North. The station is in both Travelcard Zones 1 and 2. The Northern line station was opened in 1890 by the City and South London Railway (C&SLR) while the Bakerloo line station was opened sixteen years later by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR). There is an out-of-station interchange with the nearby Elephant & Castle National Rail station.
Kennington is a London Underground station on Kennington Park Road in Kennington within the London Borough of Southwark. The station is at the junction of the Charing Cross and Bank branches of the Northern line to the north and the Morden and Battersea Power Station branches to the south. Its neighbouring stations to the north are Waterloo on the Charing Cross branch and Elephant & Castle on the Bank branch; the next stations to the south are Oval and Nine Elms. The station is in both Travelcard Zones 1 and 2.
Stockwell is a London Underground station in Stockwell in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is located on the Northern line between Oval and Clapham North stations, and on the Victoria line between Brixton and Vauxhall stations. It is in Travelcard Zone 2.
Clapham North is an Underground station in Clapham, London. It is on the Northern line between Clapham Common and Stockwell. The station is located in Travelcard Zone 2, at the northern end of Clapham High Street, and a short walk away from Clapham High Street railway station. Although there is no direct interchange between the two, it is counted as an Out of Station Interchange using Oyster, so journeys involving a change between the two are charged as through journeys and not two separate journeys.
Goodge Street is a London Underground station on Tottenham Court Road in Fitzrovia, in the London Borough of Camden. It is on the Northern line's Charing Cross branch between Warren Street and Tottenham Court Road stations, and is in Travelcard Zone 1.
Chancery Lane is a London Underground station on the Central Line between Holborn and The City in Central London, England. It has entrances within both the London Borough of Camden and the City of London. It opened in 1900 and takes its name from the nearby Chancery Lane.
Clapham Common is a London Underground station in Clapham within the London Borough of Lambeth. It is on the Northern line, between Clapham North and Clapham South stations, and is in Travelcard Zone 2.
Clapham South is a station on London Underground's Northern line between Clapham Common and Balham. The station is located at the corner of Balham Hill (A24) and Nightingale Lane, at the southern edge of Clapham Common. It is in both Travelcard Zone 2 and Travelcard Zone 3.
Kingsway telephone exchange was a Cold War-era hardened telephone exchange underneath High Holborn in London. Initially built as a deep-level air-raid shelter in the early 1940s, it was instead used as a government communications centre. In 1949 the General Post Office (GPO) took over the building, and in 1956 it became the UK termination point for TAT-1, the first transatlantic telephone cable. Closure of the facility began in the 1980s. It was built together with underground exchanges in Birmingham and Manchester, and was originally covered by a D notice
The City and South London Railway (C&SLR) was the first successful deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway to use electric traction. The railway was originally intended for cable-hauled trains, but owing to the bankruptcy of the cable contractor during construction, a system of electric traction using electric locomotives—an experimental technology at the time—was chosen instead.
The Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR), also known as the Hampstead Tube, was a railway company established in 1891 that constructed a deep-level underground "tube" railway in London. Construction of the CCE&HR was delayed for more than a decade while funding was sought. In 1900 it became a subsidiary of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), controlled by American financier Charles Yerkes. The UERL quickly raised the funds, mainly from foreign investors. Various routes were planned, but a number of these were rejected by Parliament. Plans for tunnels under Hampstead Heath were authorised, despite opposition by many local residents who believed they would damage the ecology of the Heath.
The transport system now known as the London Underground began in 1863 with the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground railway. Over the next forty years, the early sub-surface lines reached out from the urban centre of the capital into the surrounding rural margins, leading to the development of new commuter suburbs. At the turn of the nineteenth century, new technology—including electric locomotives and improvements to the tunnelling shield—enabled new companies to construct a series of "tube" lines deeper underground. Initially rivals, the tube railway companies began to co-operate in advertising and through shared branding, eventually consolidating under the single ownership of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), with lines stretching across London.