tour old london underground stations

London had the first underground railway, the first deep level underground railway and the first electric underground railway. The London Underground as it is known today, is full of history. Part of that history is its catalogue of dismantled, abandoned and disused stations; all closed for varying reasons. Within these pages are photos and details of most of them, for you to explore.

All photos ©2000-2024. Reproduction prohibited.

To download Transport for London's map of the current tube & rail system in London, click here

For a brilliant and geographically correct (French) online map of the tube and tube related lines in London, including the disused stations, click here

Most of the factual details were verified or obtained from the following excellent books: J.E. CONNOR - Abandoned Stations on London's Underground (ISBN 0-947-69930-9) J.E. CONNOR - London's Disused Underground Stations (ISBN 0-947-69929-5) NIGEL WELBOURN - Lost Lines: London (ISBN 0-7710-2623-8) They and many other books of historical interest are available from the bookshop at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, which should be the first port of call for anyone wanting further information about London's abandoned stations. Other books used for research: H.G. Follenfant: Reconstructing London's Underground (London Transport, 1975) Edwin Course: London Railways (B.T. Batsford Ltd, London 1962)

I toured the abandoned train stations of London's metro and was shocked at how much the city's underground transport network has grown

• Underneath London, there is a network of abandoned stations that used to be part of the metro.
• The London Transport Museum offers tours of the old stations, featuring the walkways and signs.
• I took a tour of an old station to find out what usually surrounds me when I take the metro.

The tour started at Piccadilly Circus station in central London. The station has seven street entrances, where commuters descend a small flight of stairs to reach the main ticket hall.

The underground station first opened in 1906. It used to have an entrance at surface level, but now the station is entirely underground.

Piccadilly Circus was then the largest underground station in London. It was built with 54 steel columns dotted around the ticket hall just under ground surface level ...

The pillars are still a prominent part of the ticket hall today.

The ticket hall also features a memorial to London Transport's first chief executive, Frank Pick, who was responsible for commissioning the designs of several London underground stations, including the round logo of the metro.

We descended down a former construction shaft to platform level. The original station was designed with eight lifts, four of which descend 26 meters to one of London's metro lines, the Bakerloo line.

The platforms on London's underground metro network are mostly long and dome-shaped, mimicking the shape of the trains which roll past.

Right at the end of the platform, there are some blue gates. I walk by these gates on my commute every day, but I've never taken much notice of them.

But inside, there are steps that lead down to abandoned corridors, walkways, and lift shafts, which would have been used when Piccadilly Circus station was first built.

The passageways date back to 1906 ...

... and feature the original signage and tiling. Some of the original passageways have been closed to the public since 1929, according to the transport museum.

The station was designed by the architect, Leslie Green, who designed more than 40 train stations across London. The authentic stamps from the tile manufacturers were still noticeable on the tiles.

The stations were mostly designed in the same way, but featured their own colored tiling pattern. The green tiles were symbolic of Piccadilly Circus.

Inspiration was also drawn from the colorful mosaic tiling of the New York subway.

The abandoned passageways also led to two former lift shafts.

London's metro stations see millions of commuters every year. Piccadilly Circus sees more than 40 million passengers per year, according to the London Transport Museum.

... But the station was also once a temporary shelter for Londoners. During the second world war, around 5,000-7,000 people sheltered at Piccadilly Circus every night.

In South London, you can also tour a disused deep level shelter which runs under one of London's tube lines, the Northern Line. The line runs around 58 meters below the surface, and the deep level shelter is situated between 15 and 20 meters below that.

Constructed by London Transport, the Clapham South shelter could accommodate around 8,000 people per night during the Second World War.

The tunnels are 16.6 feet wide and stretch for over a mile underground. The shelter was later sold to the body responsible for London's transport network, Transport for London, for £1 and leased to the transport museum for tours.

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You can now go on hidden London tours of secret tube stations

London Transport’s Hidden London tours take visitors to remote and closed stations and tunnels on the Underground

Londoners are suckers for the Underground. Sure, we moan about it constantly, but – like school, marriage and German cooking – if you can just look at it in a slightly different way, it can become magical. Specifically, we get a collective frisson as a city thinking about all the spooky shut-off tube tunnels, disused stations and plentiful ghosts below our feet. To speak to that romantic and spooky appetite, London Transport Museum has just announced a new season of its ever-popular Hidden London tours of unseen parts of the capital’s vast transport network, including some new places they’ve never visited before.

There are in-person and virtual tours available, so even if you live miles from London (or don’t fancy creeping about in a filthy warren), you can still be a tube explorer.

Highlights of the new season include evening tours of Charing Cross and Down Street stations. The Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross have been inoperative since 1999, and since used for lots of film and TV productions. Down Street station, meanwhile, you might not even have heard of. Located in Mayfair, it was shut down way back in 1932 because of low passenger numbers (locals presumably all travelled by Rolls-Royce). In WWII, it was used as an air raid shelter and, intriguingly, was used by Winston Churchill during the Blitz.

Another perennial favourite are the tours of Aldwych tube station on the Strand near Somerset House, and there are also in-person tours of Shepherd’s Bush station’s hidden nooks and crannies, and the same at Euston.

Virtual tours allow visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the new Elizabeth line stations at Tottenham Court Road and Liverpool Street, as well as a look at the closed Kingsway areas of Holborn.

So, you can spend a whole lot more time on the tube, if you fancy it. Do – it’s really worth it. But book soon – these tours always sell out.

Find more details of London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ tours and book places here .

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• Chris Waywell Deputy Editor, Time Out London

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All the abandoned London Underground stations you can actually visit and how

There are 11 you can now explore thanks to some meticulous preservation efforts

• 21:00, 11 JAN 2023

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Now 160 years old, with 272 stations under its belt, it's little surprise that the London Underground has so many abandoned stations as a result of network changes. As the city evolves, some stations have lost their initial purpose, and are deemed no longer viable - most are replaced by stations nearby or wider station complexes. Others, like Aldwych, have no direct replacement, so remain awaiting a new purpose.

Unless Transport for London (TfL) sells the relevant land and/or property, it still owns and maintains the empty stations. Most collect dust for the majority of the year, but thanks to the London Transport Museum they have been admirably preserved. In recent years, many have been opened to the public as part of special 'Hidden London' guided tours , where museum experts take you back in time under the streets of the capital to explore the Tube that was.

The Hidden London tours are the best way to explore the abandoned stations, with a range of them available to visit, as well as a disused tram tunnel near Holborn.

READ MORE: London Underground: Sadiq Khan reveals what you can expect by 2183 as Tube turns 160

Assistant director of the London Transport Museum Chris Nix, told MyLondon: "There’s so much to uncover in the disused stations because they are time-capsules in themselves: you can see vintage posters and signs on the walls, walk down corridors that haven’t been used by the public in decades, hear the stories of the people who lived and worked there… And they’re constantly evolving, because we keep discovering more and more little-known historical facts as we continue to explore our archives."

We at MyLondon in our mission to scour the capital from top to bottom (literally!) have been underground with the Hidden London team and can confirm just how insightful they are. You don't have to be a history or Tube geek, although it certainly helps, as the experts bring the effective time capsules to life for you, with demonstrations and detailed explanations too. Highlights of some of the places seen on the tours have featured in the 'Secrets of the Underground' TV series.

Hidden London guided tours are available of the following ‘abandoned’ stations:

- Down Street (in person tour)

- Aldwych (in person and virtual tours)

- King William Street (virtual tour)

- York Road (virtual tour)

- Brompton Road (virtual tour)

Also available are tours of disused parts of the following working stations:

- Charing Cross (in person tour)

- Clapham South (in person tour)

- Euston (in person and virtual tours)

- Moorgate (in person tour)

- Piccadilly Circus (in person tour)

- Shepherd’s Bush (in person tour)

All can be booked via the London Transport Museum's website here . Prices vary depending on tour type and station size, but are generally around £40-50 per person, with discounts available. Some tours are not open to under 14s. 14 to 16 year olds must be accompanied by an adult.

Have you been on one of the Hidden London tours? Tell us in the comments below!

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W hile there is little doubt that London is one of the world's great cities, it can be quite a divisive place. Some people love it for its boundless energy, exciting opportunities, and endless options for dining, nightlife, sightseeing, and culture. Others see it as a hectic and congested hellhole where everyone is too busy and nobody smiles; in 2017, Timeout voted it the unfriendliest city in the U.K. As with all things that split opinion, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and the same goes for the Big Smoke's world-famous subway system.

The London Underground, also known colloquially as the Tube, is one of the world's oldest and largest metro networks. The facts, figures, and unusual trivia are enough to fill an entire book, and it is a marvel of engineering and planning. It's been around since 1863 when the first underground railway served six stations between Paddington and Farringdon. Now the network has expanded to over 270 stops transporting up to 5 million people per day. Its sign, with a bold blue line bisecting a red circle, has become as iconic as the classic red telephone box and the ingenious design of the Tube map, created by Harry Beck in the 1930s, has been emulated by other subway systems around the world.

Yet while some people love the London Underground , just as many find it a frustrating and miserable experience. Worse still, if you're only in London for a short visit, it can also be a total waste of time, especially when walking to your destination would actually be a faster way to get around.

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Taking The London Underground Isn't Always The Best Option

London is a sprawling city of almost 10 million residents, joined daily by thousands of tourists and people commuting to work from further afield. The capital is also very old, and driving can be a total nightmare. Some of the streets date back to medieval times or even earlier, and much of the street plan was laid down before car ownership was a common thing. As a result, the traffic in London is regularly ranked as the worst in the world.

Faced with the crowds, many tourists instinctively duck into the subway when visiting London . But this isn't always the quickest and most pleasant way to travel, especially during rush hour. This is when you will often see the Tube at its worst, as the narrow and claustrophobic tunnels are swarming with hurried commuters cramming themselves into bulging subway cars. People can get pretty bad-tempered, and things are made even worse if there is a delay on the line.

It's best to consider how much time you will save by taking the London Underground. It's not always easy to judge, especially since the genius of Harry Beck's map design was making all distances between stations equal. But if you take the tube, also factor in how long it will take to descend to the platform, wait for the train, take the ride, and journey back to the surface at the other end.

Walking In Central London Is A Better Way To See The City

If you want a great example of how much time can be wasted on the London Underground, consider the short trip between Leicester Square and Covent Garden. The stations are only around 900 feet apart and the journey takes around 45 seconds. Yet hundreds of people take this pointless journey every week when it's almost quicker to walk.

The Tube is justifiably famous and you will see merch in souvenir shops alongside the Paddington Bear cuddlies and Royal Family crockery, but there's nothing really memorable about it apart from the experience of riding the world's oldest subway. It doesn't have "palaces of the people" like undergrounds of the former Soviet Union or absorbing artwork like Stockholm's metro system. While there are some lovely stations, most of the time you will spend trudging through dreary tunnels and riding escalators. This is time spent away from actually drinking in the sights and atmosphere of the city itself.

While London may be hectic, it is never boring. Even the most mundane-looking street offers terrific people-watching opportunities or reveals interesting cafes, restaurants, or shops. That's before you seek out the top London attractions . If you visit St. Paul's Cathedral by Tube, you could just pop up at the namesake station next to it. That's convenient, but nothing compared to seeing the vast dome of Christopher Wren's masterpiece rising in the distance as you stroll along Fleet Street.

Read the original article on Explore