London Undergrounds have a history of their own and offer a hidden, secret, mystical London. London has many abandoned lines, stations (ghost stations) and platforms that were not incorporated within actual development for various reasons, mainly being postponed because of war and lack of demand. This article explores The Northern Line (the black line on a tube map).
On the Northern Line journey you can actually see some abandoned platforms, with their original posters and blood red glazed tiling. The northern line was named in 1937 and it is ironic that it serves 16 of the 29 Underground Tube Stations in South London. It may also be worth noting that Finchley Central was home station to tube map designer Harry Beck and the southbound platform features a plaque.
King William Street station was the terminal station for the Northern Line (then called City & South London Railway) the world’s first electric underground railway. The station is still present under the vaults of the recently built Regent House, and the old tunnels leading to it can be seen from Northern Line trains from Borough Station today.
The station is located close to Bank Station next to the entrance to Monument Station. Upon opening its distance from Stockwell Station and the lines power, as well as its relatively steep incline meant that trains often failed unaided on fist attempts to reach the popular station. Therefore a new tunnel was built, forming the modern Bank Branch of the Northern Line (unused tunnels running directly above some of the platforms). The station itself closed in 1900 used as an air raid shelter in WW2, the tunnels bricked up for fear of flooding.
Angel station was rebuilt in 1991, as the tunnels were too narrow. New tunnels and platforms (110m long) were necessary, thus the old ones abandoned. The station has the longest escalator being 60m long. The lift shaft down to unused platforms is behind a close door on the cross platform interchange. Between Angel and Old Street, City Road station was built, just north of Old Street, but closed in 1922 when the line expanded and its isolated island platform demolished to make way for the new lines. The over ground of this station is now converted on Moreland Street.
Both Charring Cross and Euston Stations, along with the more famous Kings Cross are still used, however, there are many platforms, sections and tunnels that aren’t. It is often on the commute that you will notice passageways not accessible through to grills, locks etc. These are in fact evidence of the past and disused sections of the Underground.
Euston Station was originally two stations, for each of the railway companies the northern line emerged from. When the Northern Line was originally constructed platforms underground were accessed by stairwells and shafts, abandoned when escalators became common. It has many unused platforms and tunnels from the old routes to Kings Cross, some a result of closures in 1914 and some in 1967, such as an old entrance 100 yards from the current place. When the Victoria Line was opened, the Northern Line platforms were moved. On the northbound Northern Line platforms, those large wall holes are not ventilation they are in fact the original entrances and exit to the platforms, where the tiny locked doorway, along with those at the ends of the platform provide access to abandoned tunnels of the past.
The Northern Line congestion in the 1930’s began the development of a parallel line to Charring Cross to be used as an express route. WW2 disrupted plans and the tunnels were used by the public (though at first discouraged) as air raid shelters and post war found alternative uses (often military storage) which meant the line was never completed.
On the line between Kentish Town and Camden Town is the unused (with the exception of workmen) station of South Kentish Town or Castle Road. The over ground entrance is on the corner between Castle Road and Kentish Town Road (a Cash Converters). Although the station opened along with the others in 1907, its close proximity to both Kentish Town and Camden meant it wasn’t heavily used, so in a Lots Road power station strike in 1924 it closed and never re-opened.
During the blitz in WW2 it was converted into two-storey an air-raid shelter, the platform being removed and the lift shaft blocked. The line is back in use, but the station not. The tube speeds through the unused platform, but it can still be seen from both directions on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line. The layout is apparently like that of Kentish Town and features in john Benjamin prose South Kentish Town.
Camden Town station is crucial for the northern lines layout to work, sitting on the X of its tracks branching off both North and South. The Northern line has two branches to the North (Edgware and High Barnet) and two central branches (via Bank or Charring Cross), it was after all the merger of two competing railway company’s at the turn of the 2oth century. The station has many unused platforms of its own, further underground, used as air raid shelters during WW2.
A platform at Goodge Street station has a sign warning of a Deep Shaft, evidence of the deep underground tunnels built for Air Raid shelters during the war. There were further entrance buildings introduced for this purpose opposite the current station on Chenies Street, and one near Heals on Tottenham Court Road. WW2 recently and purpose built tunnels (London Deep Level Shelters) for this purpose as well as using the abandoned underground at stations like South Kentish Town.
Here is the short documentary by Jay Foreman about the unfinished line between Mill Hill East and Edgware tube stations. Mill Hill East Station was part of a plan, a line to run from Finsbury Park through Highgate up to Edgware one part of three of the Northern Heights Plan. Highgate station itself uses its deeper platforms, with the higher level platforms and lines built for the planned extension unused and overgrown.
The Jubilee Line took whatever platforms available Finsbury Park Station had left and the plan was abandoned. The plans for this line left unused railway paths that are now popular walks (Parkland Walk), narrow and green through North London. Some of the line was bought by British Rail and is part of the over ground network into and out of London. The expansion included the following stations:
* Finsbury Park
* Stroud Green
* Crouch End (Scenes involving Crouch End Tube Station was deleted from 2004 film Shaun of The Dead)
* Highgate
* Cranleigh Gardens (at the junction between Muswell Hill Road and Cranleigh Gardens, now residential and a school)
* Muswell Hill
* Alexandra Palace
WW2 further disrupted these plans, and even after the war plans were put forward to extend the Northern line further than Edgware going as far as Bushey Heath as one of the three parts of the initial Northern Heights plan in 1901, no extensions were made past Mill Hill East.
On the Edgware Branch between Hampstead and Golder’s Green is the ghost station of North End (also known as Bull and Bush, which the local pub adopted). It was abandoned before the end of construction in 1906 as residents feared it would be under used and the surface station would have imposed into the surrounding conserved area (located on the corner of North End and Wildwood Terrace). However the platform and tunnels were built and it is used as an emergency exit on the Line, unfinished platforms are still evident in the stairwells into tunnels as well as being used by London Transport to experiment, the whole station still being visible to the eager eye of the passenger. Hampstead Tube Station is London’s deepest station, 58.5m below ground level. Bull and Bush had it have been completed would have been deeper, approximately 67.3m below surface level.
Bull and Bush station concludes the Northern Lines interesting history and legends of ghosts, doomed passenger trains, claims fake houses with blacked out windows and of a basement in an office in the city provides access into this labyrinth of abandoned stations, platforms and tunnels.
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