There are many rumours of secret tunnels and facilities under London operated by the government, and while the vast majority of the rumours are just wishful thinking, various stories of a secret tunnel network under Whitehall are based on a very real and substantial tunnel.

During World War 2, the number of telecoms exchanges in London was quite limited, and one of the main exchanges was based in the City of London – quite some distance from Whitehall. As above ground phone lines was out of the question, a hybrid network was created.

In essence, a tunnel under Whitehall was built using conventional tube tunnelling techniques. Cables from here could be routed up to the then Trafalgar Square Station (now Charing Cross), run round to the Bakerloo Line and then through that tunnel down to Waterloo Station. Here, the cables routed round to the Waterloo & City line and not far from Blackfriars station, a narrow pipe was sunk to run the cables up to the Faraday Building.

Other cables were routed from Whitehall to systems outside London also by being laid through the tube tunnels and then to overground networks away from the main bombing targets.

This secret government “escape tunnel” is actually just a service tunnel – albeit rather a large one. Q-Whitehall is the (possibly unofficial) name given to it. Although not really designed for regular human use, it could be used as a route between Whitehall buildings in emergencies, such as during gas attacks.

Back onto the rumours, it is widely known that quite substantial upgrade work was carried out in the 1950s, and the file for that is locked away in the National Archives awaiting declassification. Put a note in your diaries for 2026, as that is when they will be released. Another unfounded rumour is that a further upgrade was carried out about only a few years ago – but that came from just a single, if usually reliable, source a few years ago.

Also, the Whitehall tunnel is reported to be linked to the deep level telecoms tunnels (allegedly) constructed by the Post Office during the cold war. Although British Telecom wont talk about their network, enough reliable, if anecdotal evidence exists to show that it was a very real project. Not to mention, a journalist who broke one day and took photos!

Why am I writing about it today?

Well, just after WW2 ended, there was a short lived period where the government talked openly about what it had done during the war, before everything clamped down again as the Cold War started. In January 1946, the trade magazine of the post office engineers – The Post Office Electrical Engineers Journal – published a review of some of its activities, and it is one of the very few sources of reliable information about the Whitehall tunnel.

Earlier this week, I finally managed to find a copy for sale and quite naturally brought it.

Below, I present an excerpt from an article about defence communications which details the deep level tunnel under Whitehall and within the tube tunnels.

Enjoy!

Line Plant.

Although some measure of security was achieved by the provision of alternative routing, the risk of extensive damage to the heavy concentration of trunk and junction cables in the central area was so serious as to make it imperative to adopt an exceptional and notable safeguard by diverting a number of the cables to the public and Post Office tube railways, and a deep tunnel which was specially constructed during the war to accommodate Post Office plant.

The construction of this tunnel, which is 7 ft. in diameter, and at a depth varying between 70 ft. and 100 ft. below the surface proceeded from three working shafts, one of which was retained as the leading-in point for the cables. A lift of sufficient capacity to take full size cable drums was installed in this shaft. Owing to the need for conserving iron during the critical period of the war, the greater part of the  tunnel was lined with reinforced concrete segments instead of the customary cast iron. Plant was installed for the ventilating, draining and lighting of the tunnel. At one point an enlarged offset was constructed to accommodate loading pots. Among the arrangements for cabling was the provision of specially designed roller skates, which were attached to the cables to facilitate their movement to the appropriate section of the tunnel. A total of 60 cables with an aggregate mileage of 62 was installed in the tunnel, in which about 150 cables can ultimately be accommodated. A typical view of the tunnel showing the cables in position is given in Fig. 4.

SAFEGUARDING DEFENCE COMMUNICATIONS

Protection for defence communications was in general more elaborate and certain in its function than that provided for public communications, owing to the fundamental importance of maintaining the continuity of their service. In London this objective was finally achieved by putting the plant deep underground, or in exceptionally strong reinforced concrete structures having walls several feet in thickness. The most notable and comprehensive scheme of this character was the tunnel system constructed for the Service Departments.

Deep-level Protection.

This tunnel system is a comprehensive scheme of deep-level protection in the vulnerable central area for equipment and cables, carrying vital defence communications from the buildings of the Service Departments to other parts of the country. Associated with these specially constructed tunnels are the public and P.O. tube railways.

The ultimate scheme represents the accretion of five principal component schemes which were proceeded with at various times during the war. The initial scheme, commenced in December, was a tunnel 12 ft. in diameter and at a depth of about 100 ft., which, intended at the time solely for cable protection, is connected by short lateral tunnels of 5 ft. diameter to the Service Departments and Federal exchange. The latter is a protected exchange in sub-ground accommodation and was provided at the outbreak of the war to give an uninterrupted service for the principal officers in Government Departments.

Access to the main tunnel for Post Office personnel is provided by an automatic lift and emergency staircase in a shaft at an exchange, which is connected to the main tunnel by an 8 ft diameter lateral tunnel. The cables from the buildings of the Service Departments. after being taken through 12-in steel bore tubes connected to the smaller lateral tunnels, are terminated on the M.D.F. in the main tunnel A portion of this M.D.F. can be discerned in Fig. 5.

It was obvious that the main tunnel would afford absolute security for telephone and telegraph equipment, the first installation of which was accordingly proceeded with and completed in the summer of 1941 to meet the increasing requirements for defence communications. This equipment, which has been added to from time to time, and now provides for about 4,000 working circuits, includes among the many constituent items, 71 18-channel V.F. systems, 26 canner systems, 13 coaxial cable terminals and 864 audio amplifiers A small portion of this equipment may be seen in Fig 6.

During 1941-42 major extensions of the tunnel, which more than doubled its length, were carried out, affording underground access between various Service Departments and accommodating a teleprinter switched centre. In all, a, total of 1 mile 740 yards of tunnel has been constructed under the various schemes associated with the tunnel system and six shafts with passenger lifts provided The tunnel system is connected via the tube railways to the Citadel building.

These specially constructed tunnels and the public and P.O tube railways have been extensively used to give deep-level protection to cables carrying vital communications. A total of 72 miles of cable has been laid in P.O. tunnels, 116 miles in public tube railways and 20 miles in the P.O. railway

“Citadel” Protection.

The tunnel system and its connection with the tube railways is an outstanding example of absolute protection for both telecommunication equipment and cables, but there were many other schemes during the war where circumstances only warranted, or made practicable, a lesser degree of physical protection. The Service Departments had many subsidiary installations for operational control, which, situated in areas subject to desultory bombing, accommodated very important equipment As this equipment could not be replaced with sufficient speed without serous interruption to the operational control, it was essential to provide very substantial protection for the installations. The associated line plant, although equally important could be more readily restored in the event of damage, and, moreover, the resulting interruption could be minimized by the provision of alternative routing. The physical protection for such installations usually took the form of a massive reinforced concrete structure, either wholly or partly below ground, with wails and roof several feet in thickness and the interior subdivided to limit blast effects from direct hits which might penetrate the structure.

In the London Telecommunications Region there were nearly a dozen such structures, many accommodating a considerable amount of telephone and telegraph equipment. Fig. 7 shows a view of the switchboard installed in one of these Citadels. In addition, the installation included telegraph equipment for 123 teleprinters and other equipment for the remote control of radio transmitters. Steel pipes for leading in the cables at alternative points were laid during the construction of the Citadels.

Supplementary Security for Line Plant

In London the tube railways were used extensively to give deep-level protection for a few miles for the cables radiating from the central equipment. Beyond the emergent points from the tube railways, however, the cable routes were as vulnerable as any other underground plant at shallow depth, and with the persistent and widely dispersed bombing in 1940-41, the incidence of damage to these routes was sufficiently serious to require special measures to mitigate the effects of the interruptions.

The scheme adopted entailed the linking up, by circumferential cables, of the radial cable routes in the tube railways at a number of selected interception centres located not far from the emergent points. Included in the scheme were many of the surface trunk cables, which were intercepted at exchanges adjoining the main routes. At several places where the circumferential and radial routes intersected, and exchanges were not conveniently situated to intercept them, substantial pill-box structures, in which an interception frame was installed, were constructed. Interruption by bomb damage to any of the radial cable routes could thus be readily restored by suitable re-routing of the circuits over the circumferential cables at the interception centres.

The London scheme, started in the late autumn of 1940 and completed during the following year, involved the laying of 250 miles of loaded cable of various sizes An interesting feature in the cabling work was the completion of the circumferential cable system across the Thames by using the 12 ft. diameter pilot tunnel at Dartford, which had been constructed before the war in preparation for building the main vehicular tunnel.

The inclusion of the surface trunk cables in the scheme enabled not only defence circuits to be rerouted, but also important trunk circuits which had been interrupted by bomb damage to the radial routes, a facility which exemplified the duality of purpose of the Post Office telecommunication network in the national prosecution of the war.

Considering the dark dark corners, strange noises and abandoned tunnels that litter the soil under London, it is possibly no surprise that stories of hauntings have emerged over the years.

On Wednesday, a couple of authors who have recently written a book on the subject gave a talk on the subject and I wandered along to the Shoe Lane Library to have a listen.

Ghosts are, despite their ethereal nature, quite a contentious topic and not unlike Marmite, they evoke very strong emotions in many people. Indeed, the authors had sometimes faced problems researching the book as people were worried about describing their experiences lest they be mocked in the staff-room.

My personal take on them is that unless you presume lots of people are lying, then something odd is going on – and I would love to understand the science behind the phenomena.

Interestingly, a survey from a couple of years ago by fairly well respected pollsters, Gallup found that belief in ghosts is higher now than at any time in the past 50 or so years.

Anyhow, the talk itself was a quick run though various hauntings and I’ll briefly summarise a few of them below:

They started off with a fairly notorious sermon by the Rev. John Cumming, who was not at all keen on the subterranean railways.

“…the forthcoming end of the world will be hastened by the construction of underground railways burrowing into infernal regions and thereby disturbing the Devil.’”

Certainly there were the odd complaints of this nature about the deep tunnels, but the Victorians were digging deeper coal mines at the time without bumping into Hades or its ilk, so their pronouncements of doom were generally ignored.

One more famous incidents occurs at Aldgate Station, where allegedly there is a log book for ghost sightings. Sadly, getting a glimpse of this log-book proves as elusive as the spectres they detail.

At the station, it was reported that a worker was knocked unconscious after accidentally touching a live power rail and as another worker went to assist him, the ghost of a lady was seen stroking the unconscious man’s hair. Some stories claim the lady saved the man’s life, but it seems more that she simply comforted him while help arrived.

Another station, with a similar name is the now disused Aldwych Station, which was built on the site of a theatre, and the ghost of an actress has occasionally been seen in the station.

Amusingly, a TV show did a series of investigations into hauntings, and the physic reported seeing in Aldwych the event that had (allegedly) occurred in Aldgate. I suspect someone was doing a bit of reading beforehand and mixed up their stations!

Bank Station is also noted as a site of hauntings, and as the ticket hall is actually the former burial grounds of St Mary Woolnoth Church, many researchers cite that as the possible cause.

The most noted of the Bank hauntings though is nothing to do with the old burial ground – being the ghost of Sarah Whitehead. Her brother, who worked at the nearby Bank of England was hung for fraud and she spent the next decade or so visiting the Bank each day to ask for her brother until she in turn eventually died.

Neither were buried in the former graveyard.

Over at Bethnal Green is one of the more sombre hauntings. The station entrance was the location for one of the most serious civilian losses of life during WW2 when a panicked crowd tried to seek shelter during an air raid, and 173 people died in a crush by the stairway entrance. What made it more tragic was that the air-raid sirens were a false alarm, and the panic caused by a loud booming sound, thought to be a bomb, was actually a new anti-aircraft gun that had just been set up in nearby Victoria Park.

Since then, there have been repeated reports of unsettling sounds and people feeling uncomfortable in the station.

For reasons that are not fully understood, there is a known tendency for low-frequency sounds to make people feel uncomfortable, and the tube tunnels are certainly replete with plenty of machines that cause similar effects.

However, when a worker reports the clear sounds of women and children screaming in the booking hall, and that it went on for a period of at least 10 minutes, you have to wonder what could possibly cause that effect.

To lighten the mood, back down the Central Line to the old British Museum station – which is a disused station between Holborn and TCR – where the ghost of a mummy was reported to have been seen. The reports of this haunting are, to put it mildly, dubious and can be discarded as urban myth.

Incidentally, you can still see what is left of the station as you pass though it on the Central Line. Regardless of which direction you approach it, peer out of the right-side windows and although the platforms have been removed, you can make out the empty remains of the station structure.

One of the more unsettling ghostly experiences is had by staff at Elephant & Castle station where the Bakerloo Trains end their travels and prepare to return northbound. Late at night, a lady is sometimes seen getting onto an empty train which is to be returned to the depot, and when staff go to remove her, the carriage is empty again.

Incidentally, and a sign possibly of how our imaginations are important in ghost sightings – when it comes to ghostly trains, people rarely report the sound or sight of diesel engines. It’s always a steam train that is heard. You’d have thought some diesels would have got in on the act by now, but it seems not. Or maybe we humans cannot imagine a “modern ghost” and expect ghostly trains to be only from the steam era?

Back up to the Central Line – which seems to be overly generous with its hauntings – and we get to the up escalator at Marble Arch station. Here, several people have reported leaving a late train to ascend the escalator and feeling that someone is standing on the step right behind them, and leaning uncomfortably close towards them. Anyone turning around will find the escalator is empty. One lady reported that out of the corner of her eye she noticed him wearing a hat and smart black overcoat – and annoyed by his closeness when she also turned to confront him, the escalator was empty. She now wont use that station unless with friends.

The Screaming Spectre of Farringdon is quite famous and thought to be Anne Naylor, a girl adopted by hat maker, Sarah Metyard and cruelly treated until eventually she was murdered. Metyard’s attempted to disposed of the body into the sewer at Chick Lane, but parts of the body were discovered.

Eventually identified as the murderer, after her daughter turned her in, she was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1768 and sentenced to death. Her body, as was the norm at the time for murderers was handed to the Surgeons’ Hall to be dissected for students to study then put on public display.

The ghost was thought to haunt the region of the sewer for some years, but is now heard quite distinctively at Farringdon Station. That she moved to the station is a bit odd, as the sewer in Chick Lane lead down to the River Fleet, and while the road no longer exists, it was on the site of the now derelict Smithfield meat market buildings – a good hundred yards away from the station.

Finally – one I was quite interested in.

The Kennington Loop is a bit of track that enables trains on the Northern Line to turn around at Kennington. Passengers are never allowed on trains going round the loop, and drivers are said to quite dislike the tunnel.

Not only is it very noisy as the tight curve makes the wheels squeal on the tracks, but sometimes trains are held at the end of the loop waiting for space at the platform. Here, in the silence, drivers have reported hearing people talking in the carriage behind them and the sounds of doors slamming as if someone is walking through the train, even though they had checked to make sure it was empty before starting round the loop.

I’ve have the pleasure of taking the Kennington Loop, and in a 1938 tube train, but sadly we didn’t stop at the spot to listen for the sounds of passengers long lost to history seeking to commune with us.

–

That’s a quick run though of some of the ghosts mentioned at the talk, and I have dug a bit deeper into the Farringdon Ghost story to find the location of the streets involved. The book they have written is Haunted London Underground.

Whilst looking for something totally different on the Discovery TV website, I came across an interesting short video clip about the time when Plessey occupied several miles of tunnel under London and set up a factory inside.

The Central Line extension from Liverpool St was built before the war, but not fitted out for trains until the war finished – priorities being somewhat diverted. After the above ground Plessey factory was bombed by German planes, they decided to move nearly 2,000 people into the newly built tunnels.

The factory specialised in making components for fighter planes and bombers.

The conversion of the Underground was completed in March 1942 at a cost of £500,000 and gave Plessey 300,000 sq.ft. of factory floor.

The 4 and a half minute video clip is on the Discovery Website.

Incidentally, I was looking to see if Discovery Science is going to repeat a program I saw last night about the Jubilee Line extension. While nearly a decade old, the documentary had loads of good footage of tunnels etc. Sadly, I can’t find a repeat date, but did notice that next Sunday (25th Oct), there will be a programme about the building of the Singapore Underground.

Today I finally achieved something I have wanted to do for years, and got to see a rather interesting bit of art into the bargain.

Underneath the Kingway road in Holborn lies the Kingsway Tramway that used to carry electric trams until it was closed down in the 1950s. Since then it has been basically a storage dump for the local council and only on very rare occasions opened to visitors.

Over the next few weeks though, a artist has managed to put a specially designed bit of industrial art inside this closed-off tunnel and is letting people in to have a look.

At the top of the ramp leading down to the subway is a set of locked gates that have stood guard over the entrance, mocking the passers-by who can often be seen peering through the railings and wishing they could stand on the other side.

Today, those gates were flung open and a group of us went down the slope to the dark cavern that hinted of wonders within.

After a brief warning that it would be a VERY bad idea to lean on anything as it is filthy down there, we were taken along the tunnel to the old Holborn Tram Station where we lingered for a short while posing for photos and looking around.

Then down to the art itself.

Basically, two large “knitting machines” that slowly rotate to uncoil ropes which twist to produce a single strand as the machines slowly pull apart along a wooden railway.

The blurb provided said:

Chord is concerned with the human perception of time, as both a linear and cyclical notion. The rope becomes a strong structural metaphor, a clear linear entity made up and formed by a cyclical process. Each point on the rope can be traced back to a certain moment during the cycle and duration becomes interchangeable with length, time with length, time with space, an hour becomes 20cm, a day five meters.

Which is yes, well, quite.

I sort of understand what he is trying to say, but frankly it is not really relevant for me. Either I will like it, or I wont – and explaining it may make me appreciate it more, but it won’t change whether I liked it.

Fortunately, this is something that I liked. Actually, I liked it a lot.

There was something about the very crisp clean industrial machine slowly rotating its kitting yarns as it plied out the rope that really worked for me.

Setting it inside a semi-derelict site added to the experience.

One thing that doesn’t really come across from the photos, or the text I read about it is that the rotating structure moves quite quickly. Although the linear movement is imperceptible, the rotating is reasonably speedy. That seems to make it a much more interesting thing to look at.

Also, unlike some fussy art venues, here is one where people didn’t walk around in hushed awe, but darted around with cameras taking photos with gay abandon. This is art you don’t have to be reverential when granted permission to be within its presence.

The guides who accompanied us down were happy to chat about the art, the tunnel or just gossip.

A hole in the roof was pointed out and they are going to have to work out how to cover it as the unfurling structure moves slowly down the tunnel. Otherwise you are going to get a wet chord.

That hole has allowed a lot of autumn leafs to fall down into the tunnel, and as a bit of art about time, I do like the idea that over this weekend, the spinning structure will “pass through” autumn.

No idea if it was designed that way, or if I am just pretending to be a “wanky art critic” when I noticed that.

Thirty minutes is what you get down in the tunnel and then you are eased back out into the sunlit lands.

I went in unashamedly to see the tunnel. After years of anticipation, it was important for me that the art didn’t spoil the visit, and I am delighted that it added to the experience.

There are a range of events around the installation, including a talk about the art and one about the tunnel.

Various other London bloggers I know have been down there already:

Diamond Geezer, Time Out, Caroline and Londonist.

You can book a free visit via the Measure website, but only have until the 8th November before those gates are once again firmly sealed shut in the face of curious visitors.

Some more photos on my usual Flickr account.

Lurking not too far from where I live is a subterranean marvel that is considered to be one of the most important locations in engineering history. I am referring to the currently closed off East London Line railway – for the tunnel it runs through under the Thames is world’s first (successful) sub-aqueous tunnel.

Not too far from the Rotherhithe tunnel is the Brunel Museum situated within an old pumping station, but conveniently next to the original deep shaft that Marc Brunel (father of more famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel) sunk into the clay soil to get down to the depth where the tunnel would stretch out under the river.

I won’t relate the torturous history of the tunnel itself – as that is amply told elsewhere, for my visit to was not to the tunnel but to the remains of that original shaft.

I arrived at at the museum just as a lot of people were filing out to go to the shaft, so I ahem, joined the crowd. I’ve been in the museum before as they used to run tours of the two key stations, Rotherhithe and Wapping and take a slow train between them.

As part of the refurbishment of the tunnels for the overland railway, the shaft, which has always been empty from surface to deep underground has had a slab of concrete installed and the upper space will be handed over to the museum to clean up and turn into an extension. As the slab was finished off only a few weeks ago – the opportunity here was to see the interior of the shaft before it is cleaned up again.

Getting in for visitors will be down a replica of the original stair case that lined the tunnel when it was open to pedestrians – but our access was through a tiny door that you quite literally had to crawl through and then down some scaffolding to the floor, which is about 3 stories below its roofline (and about 2 stories below ground).

Here lots of photos were taken and a volunteer gave us a brief run through why the shaft is so important in engineering history and some details of its construction.

In essence, they had a huge metal ring, upon which they started building a high wall. As the wall got heavier, it started sinking into the soft soil – aided by workers inside digging out that soil. More bricks added, and the shaft continues to sink into the ground. At one point it got stuck and even adding 50,000 bricks to the top of the shaft wouldn’t unstick the gigantic pipe.

Here there seems to be two variants of the solution – in essence, water leaking into the shaft normally lubricated the sides and one weekend the whole thing dropped down several metres. Whether this was an accidental switching off of the water pumps over a weekend that had a fortuitous outcome, or a deliberate decision seems to vary depending on who is telling the tale.

The shaft finally at its required depth, the tunnel under the river could be cut out. A similar shaft on the north side was also built – although two more shaft, four times wider to allow horses down to the tunnel never got built as some idiot stuck a bridge at Tower Hill and ruined the finances of the tunnel.

Talk over and a climb back out through the tiny exit, and that was it. A short visit, but this subterranean geek was bouncing with delight to have been able to have a look around.

I took a quick look around the museum and picked up a guide book that I would have brought last time I was there, only they couldn’t take cards and I was out of cash on the day. I also had a long chat with one of the staff about the pneumatic railway I am researching and he mentioned something about its precursor at Crystal Palace I wasn’t aware of. More research needed. Yay!

It was a shame we couldn’t go down to the original tunnels – but I have done a slow train tour through there before courtesy of the museum.

A slight rant – they let people into the shaft through a really tiny doorway – and yet other underground structures with significantly easier access points refuse to open up for the public visits due to “health & safety” concerns. That really annoys me as it quite evidently isn’t a problem.

As usual – more photos over at Flickr.