History Shorts: snippets of local history

The Covid-19 lockdown and economic downturn have affected most strands of society, including museums and other cultural venues. How can they remain relevant in a post pandemic world while trying to generate much needed income? A dynamic digital offering is one answer. London Transport Museum is trying just that with a series of 'virtual' tours from its Hidden London portfolio ; in effect, an intimate series of Zoom meetings focused on two disused underground stations that can't be visited in real life. At £30 a head, these aren't particularly cheap but I couldn't resist buying a ticket to find out if an online visit was worth it. I chose a visit to Brompton Road, a Leslie Green designed station on the Piccadilly line which was open to passengers between 1906 and 1934 (the other available tour is of King William Street station). Passenger numbers at Brompton Road were lower than expected for a station initially built with four lifts (it gradually lost these and other

I had read a lot about the secret side of ‘underground London’ for a while without tasting too much of the real thing: the odd surface remnant of a disused tube station being the height of it. So I was delighted then to stumble across news that London Transport Museum were again hosting visits inside the disused Aldwych station, which had closed to passengers in September 1994. The tours sold out sharpish but I managed to get a couple of tickets in time! There is definitely a sense of excitement about getting a glimpse of something that has been ‘hidden’, even in relatively recent history. Even when in use, Aldwych (which opened as the Strand station in November 1907 on the site of a demolished theatre) had an aura of sadness about it, and not just because the ghost of a theatre actress allegedly haunts one of the platforms!. Despite bigger plans on several occasions, it only ever existed as a small branch line from Holborn and was under-used by passengers throughout its hi

South Kentish Town disused tube station on Kentish Town road featuring the distinctive ox-blood facade of a Leslie Green designed building. It first opened in 1907 but was abandoned in 1924 as a result of low passenger numbers - a timely strike at a local power station took the station out of use and it wasn't returned to operation. During the Second World War, it served as an air raid shelter while in 1951 it featured as the subject of a short story written and performed by John Betjeman on the BBC Home Service. Retail units now occupy the surface building that once led to the underground railway. Its basement currently hosts an Escape Room . The Abandoned Stations website has photos from inside the former station.