Sep 1, 2010 The Evening Standard may have leaked this a day or two early as the LT Museum booking office hasn’t had the full details confirmed yet – but there will be guided tours of the disused Aldwych tube station later this month running from 24th-26th September.
Absolutely no more information is known yet, so don’t bombard the LT Museum for details. As soon as the details are finalised, they will put it on their website, and my auto-tracking systems will alert me to update this blog post.
Nonetheless, the chance to get down into the bowels of this iconic station is one not to be missed – even though I have actually been down there once before.
More photos to wet your appetite.
I wonder if they read my previous blog post about tours of the disused station and will include the tunnels as well *grins*.
The ticket office floor of the station was opened to the public recently, for the Transforming the Tube exhibition.
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aldwych, london underground, subteranean
Jul 2, 2010 There you are, a quiet little tube station slumbering quietly on the corner of a road, little used save for tube staff on training or the occasional disturbance by people wearing interesting clothing and saying luvvie a lot – then all of a sudden, a load of large signs are lined up around your walls, a few video screens start playing something and a couple of scale models of other tube stations appear.
The side doors open and suddenly the general public are back and wandering around the place.
What’s going on you wonder.
Aldwych, a tube station that was closed in 1994 due to a lack of justification for modernisation was now itself, slightly ironically being used to trumpet the glories of the ongoing modernisation programme as part of an exhibition called “Transforming the Tube“.
This is a welcome part of the resurgent desire by the tube management to explain why the weekly email of tube disruptions can often be summarised as “don’t bother trying to go out”. A clutch of bloggers were invited to a meeting at TfL just over a year ago, and while we can hardly take the credit for the idea of using a disused tube station for an exhibition – I do distinctly recall a discussion about the possibility of public exhibitions.
You may thank us later.
The exhibition is basically a lot of large boards with large font text explaining a lot of what is going on right now, and in another section of the station, an indication of just how old some of the working parts of the railway are.
Click on the image for a larger version
In addition to the above time-map, there was also a slightly scary display board about how some of the signalling actually works.
The Programme Machine is an electromechanical device which contains a roll of plastic in which holes have been punched that encode timetable information. As the holes for a particular train come into position, feels pass through them, closing all the necessary contacts to set the route for that train.
Yes, they really do still use a plastic sheet with holes in it to control the signalling on some lines! Your train home is being controlled by a glorified Fisher Price record player.
The exhibition frankly could have been set up anywhere, and indeed, I hope it does go on some sort of travelling show as it is actually quite interesting. However, the genius has to be putting it inside Aldwych tube station as that is bound to pull in even those who are only vaguely interested – just to have a look around.
Model of the future Tottenham Court Rd Station
For those who go to be educated – you will learn what has been going on for the past decade during all the tube closures – and what to look forward to over the next decade. As a long suffering Jubilee Line passenger, I am looking forward to the oft-delayed completion and a one-third increase in capacity on the line.
Scanned from the free brochure handed out
Sadly you don’t get to see too much of the building, but you do get to walk through the iconic 1907 lifts that are now locked in place at the ticket hall level, and apparently sometimes the staff let you walk through the joining corridor that links two lifts in case of emergency.
However, you do get to see something quite rare, and you wont even notice how rare it is unless I explain it to you.
As you go in, via the side street entrance, there is an Entrance and an Exit – the idea being that the lifts had two doors, one letting people in, and a dedicated exit to let people out. However, the exit side was only used for a very short period of time before being abandoned and everyone used the same door.
So, as you go through the lift and into the Exit corridor to see more of the exhibition, you are now standing a very rarely seen part of the tube network. It just wont have that dank abandoned aesthetic you were hoping for.
Overall, it is a good worthy exhibition, and although 90% of the material is replicated in the take-away brochure, it is worth visiting, even if only to get to peer inside a disused tube station.
Incidentally, that brochure has a note on the back that it is printed on 100% recycled stock. In train-language, stock is the name given to the tube trains, so my brochure is made from the pulverised remnants of an old tube train?
You have until next Friday to make a visit yourself, and the opening times are:
Other people to have visited:
My previous Blog Post about the Aldwych Station
May 4, 2010 Probably the most famous of the “lost rivers” under London is the river Fleet, an increasingly polluted river through the City which was slowly buried to hide its contents from surface dwelling folk as its contents became increasingly putrid.
I have previously transcribed an excerpt from the Illustrated London News of how the Fleet Sewer was enlarged in 1845, and now I have a later article from 1854 of how another section, closer to the river, was being repaired.
Quite interestingly, the article goes into quite a bit of detail – as was common for newspapers of the time – in giving a break down of how the sewer runs from Hampstead down to the Thames.
The ubiquitous Diamond Geezer mapped out the line of the sewer from above in 2005, and I now present an article about the same, from 1854.
THE FLEET SEWER
Repair of the Fleet Sewer
The passenger who rolls smoothly over the well-paved roadway, or hurriedly elbows his way through the dense mass of human beings which throng the foot-pavements of this huge metropolis, rarely thinks of the vast reticulation of subterranean channels by which are removed the liquid refuse of the millions inhabiting the banks of the Thames. Yet, when it is considered that, during dry weather, the aggregate liquid refuse of the metropolitan population, contributed by hundreds of thousands of inlets and minute drains, amounting to about 14,000,000 cubic feet, or 87,000,000 gallons daily, is discharged by sewers, and, for the most part, without inconvenience of any kind, their importance becomes at once apparent.
But this is their dry weather discharge. In times of rain, the utility of the sewers, although, perhaps, not greater, is more striking. The area of the metropolis, according to the boundary of the Registrar-General, is about 112 square miles – the more closely populated portion may, perhaps, be taken at about 60 square miles; and, if we assume a rain of about half an inch in depth equally over the whole of the latter area in twenty-four hours (a rate of fall no unusual), then, during the considerable portion of the time, in addition to the sewage from the houses, a quantity of water of about 18,000,000 gallons per hour, is discharged by the London sewers. Storms even of half an inch of rain during the hour are of yearly occurrence; and even of two inches in an hour, are within the memory of most men; yet the water of the severest storms is, for the most part, received and carried off by the sewers without injury or inconvenience, and, with exceptional cases, almost immediately; and, at the furthest, within half an hour afterwards, but slight traces of the storms are left. When the great length, the inevitable intricacy of this vast system of subterranean channels is considered, the Sewers of London, which have been plentifully abuses of late years, must, with all their faults, take their place among the wonders of this leviathan city; and fully justify the assertion made by the most eminent engineers, that London is the best-drained city in the world.
One of the oldest Sewers, if not actually the oldest, in the metropolis, is the Fleet; once an open river, which, as Stow tells us, “had been of such breadth and depth, that ten or twelve ships’ navies at once, with merchandise, were wont to come to the aforesaid bridge of Fleet” – is still a river, although hidden from sight; the waters of the Highgate and Hampstead hills still run through it; the old Bourne (now also a sewer) still delivers its waters into it; but, in addition to this, from running through a dense population, it probably received and discharges more sewage water than any other sewer in the metropolis.
The Corporation of London early saw the propriety of covering over the open water-courses, which in the process of time, had become open ditches of sewers. The Fleet, north of Fleet-bridge, was covered in when Fleet-market was built; the portion north of Holborn was covered in about eighteen years ago, it being the last open sewer within the city boundary: above the City, the Fleet is, however, in portions still open.
The sizes of this vast arterial drain are as follows:- Near Blackfriars-bridge, it is about 16 feet high and 12 feet wide; in Farringdon-street, the sewer is divided into two branches, each being about 11 feet 6 inches high and 6 feet wide, which join at Holborn-bridge, and connect with a sewer about 12 feet high and 11 feet 6 inches wide.
That portion of the Fleet Sewer which lies south of Fleet Street is now under repair. Our Sketch will give some idea of the extent of the work, and the extreme mechanical difficulties that have to be contended with in carrying it on in such a situation; the only opening to it, as was reported by the engineer to the City Commissioners of Sewers, being but three feet square, and the dewer itself always running vast quantities of water, subject to tidal influence; and, in times of rain, its current being swollen to a vast torrent, capable of carrying almost everything before it; the rain-water of between seven and eight square miles being carried off by this sewer.
The works are being executed under the direction of Mr. W Haywood, the Engineer to the Commission; Messrs. Thomas Crook and Son, being the contractors for the work.
We subjoin a few details of the Fleet, as a river:- The small rapid stream Fleet, which has given name to the prison and street, and the portion of the City Wall ditch from Holborn to the Thames, has its origin in a nursery-ground on the eastern ridge of Hampstead-hill. Here is becomes a sewer; after which it issues from the side of a bank below Well-walk; and then flows down a small valley of gardens and orchards to near the reservoir of the Hampstead water-heads, to feed which the springs of the Fleet were collected in 1589, and were afterwards leased out by the City of London. From Hampstead the Fleet may be traced to the upper part of Kentish-town; after which it is diverted from its original course for the sewage of Camden-town; but its ancient channel may be traced at the back of the Castle Tavern, Kentish-town, and next in the King’s-road, near Pancras Workhouse; and about 1825 the Fleet was conspicuous all along the Bagnigge-wells-road, but is now covered over. Its further course is under the walls of the House of Correction, in Clekenwell-fields, thence to the workhouse in Coppince-row, under Eyre-street (formerly Hockley-in-the-Hole), having here been originally joined by “the River of the Wells,” formed by Clerken, Skinners’, and other wells; and thus to the bottom of Holborn. Here is received the waters of the Old Bourne, which rose near Middle-row, and the channel of which forms the sewer of Holborn-hill to this day. Then the united stream flowed beneath what is now called Farringdon-street into the Thames.
The Fleet - Sketched near Hampstead
Apr 16, 2010 Another extract from my collection of the Illustrated London News of 1845 – this time a short item on the enlargement of the earlier sewer system running under Fleet Street.
As subterranean structures are a long running passion of mine, the two pictures are what make the item of most interest for me. Click on the images for larger versions.
You will also probably notice in the first drawing below, the Temple Bar in its original location blocking Fleet Street. It was removed in 1878 and sold to the owner of Theobalds House in Hertfordshire, where it remained until being moved back to London in 2004 and placed next to St Paul’s Cathedral.
Enjoy!
THE FLEET-STREET SEWER
The works in progress for deepening the Sewer of Fleet-street have attracted considerable attention, partially from the obstruction which they have presented to the public traffic. They are, however, of intrinsic interest although the Sewer of Fleet-street cannot compete, in antiquity, with the ancient water-course known as the Fleet Ditch, -
The king of dykes, than whom no slice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood
It appears that although Sewers have been constructed in London for upwards of four centuries, it is only within the last ten or fifteen years that the drainage of the City has been satisfactorily accomplished. Hitherto, it was very defective and imperfect; some of the smaller streets having a Sewer, while the larger thoroughfares, as Cheapside, Ludgate Hill, &c., had none. From time to time, however, this evil has been remedied; and the Sewerage is now nearly completed.
The Sewer of Fleet-street, the subject of our Engraving, having been found insufficient to carry of the water, for which it was intended, it became necessary to cut deeper, and construct a new sewer: the greatest requisite depth is 25 feet, which decreased to about 17 feet near Temple Bar; hence the Sewer runs easterly to Water Lane, where it is joined by another Sewer, which runs into Whitefriars Dock.
One of our Engravings conveys an idea of the extraordinary labour requisite for excavating the ground to the requisite depth, and the numerous provisions against accidents in the dangerous operation. Such is the underground labour; whilst the difficulty of keeping open the traffic, so as not to extinguish the “very animated appearance” of Fleet-street, is a work of much difficulty. The cost of the present undertaking, contracted for by Messrs. Ward and Son, of Aldersgate-street, is £2000.
There do not appear to be published data from which the total extend of the metropolitan Sewers can be ascertained. The Holborn and Finsbury divisions contain eighty-three miles. In addition to these, there are sixteen miles of smaller Sewers, to carry off the surface-water from the streets and roads, and two hundred and fifty-four miles of drains leading from houses to the main Sewers.
Apr 14, 2010 I mentioned the other day that I recently acquired a copy of a City of London report into possible rebuilding plans for the City following the end of World War 2 and that it contains a lot of maps of the city, as it was in 1944.
They are quite large and stuck inside a hardback book so also therefore irritatingly difficult to scan in neatly.
Nonetheless, I have made a go with the map which most interested me – Plan Number 1B – more usefully titled, Existing Railways and Subways.
Interesting for me is that the Holborn service tunnels don’t seem to be marked to the West of Chancery Lane, although they are marked to the East of it. More research needed.
You may also notice the dotted green line – which is the second Post Office railway (the original pneumatic line not being marked on the map), although there seems to be an odd right angle length which I am not familiar with.
Notice also how the underground railways tend to follow the roads – that was to avoid paying wayleaving rights to the buildings above them.
In addition, there is the original City and South London Railway running to King William Street – later abandoned as the Northern Line was extended and improved.
Finally, if you know what you are looking at – notice how Tower Hill station seems to be in the wrong place. In fact that is the earlier Mark Lane tube station which was closed when Tower Hill was opened in 1967.
Other sizes – large and very large.
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