Adventurous Urbex Guide Serving Kent, ENG

---

Down Street once part of the Great Northern Piccadilly and Brompton Railway – which gave rise to the modern Piccadilly line – Down Street station was closed in 1932, twenty-five years after opening. Squashed quite closely between Hyde Park Corner and Dover Street (now known as Green Park), it suffered from low passenger numbers due to both the proximity of its neighbours, and the wealth of its local residents, who could afford more comfortable means of transport.

Aldwych was opened as Strand station in 1907, and was a project of the Great Northern Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, which had itself grown out of the merger of the Great Northern and Strand Railway (mooted to run from Wood Green to Strand) and the Brompton and Piccadilly Circus Railway (which would run from Angel out past South Kensington). Their eventual marriage made it convenient to connect the two lines, by linking Piccadilly Circus and Holborn via Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Strand was therefore left stranded as the only station on a weird southern spur of the Piccadilly line, with plans to link it to Fleet Street and the City of London in 1903.

At South Kentish Town It had been planned, designed, and executed under the name Castle Road to serve what is now the Northern line, but a few weeks before opening in 1907, the powers that be reversed their decision on the name – a costly volte-face which meant painting over the bespoke tiles they’d already installed. South Kentish Town was dogged by low passenger numbers from the very start, and as quickly as 1908, drivers began ignoring the need to stop there.

Another station that was marked for closure early on, City Road opened in 1901 and weathered calls to shutter as early as 1908. Again, low passenger numbers were the killer, as its lack of use meant that the cost of upgrading the station and expanding the platforms couldn’t be justified. Its closure in 1922 explains, amongst other things, why there’s such an interminable gap between Angel and Old Street on the Northern line.  Though most of the station was demolished in the 1960s, the lift shaft stood standing until 2017, when it was torn down and replaced with an energy centre. There’s good news to come out of this, though, for the centre helps funnel the ungodly heat of the tunnels towards warming up homes in Islington – a nice legacy for a recent disappearance amongst our abandoned Tube stations.

Back on the Piccadilly line now, and as one door opens, another closes – for York Road shuttered on the same day in 1932 that the Finsbury Park to Arnos Grove section of the line opened. It was an inauspicious end to a typically gorgeous Leslie Green-designed station, which had opened in 1906. With Kings Cross being so close, passenger numbers plummeted, and rumours of the station’s closure circulated for years before it was finally shuttered.

Another confusing bit of history here, one born out of the marriage of the Metropolitan Railway and the District Railway (see if you can guess which Tube lines they became…), which completed the so-called inner circle: now the modern Circle line. Mark Lane was opened in 1884, to replace a short-lived station to the east known as Tower of London station, which operated for two glorious years before it was decided the site needed a larger station.

​

Ongar has had a strange old existence as abandoned Tube stations go, with both a pre- and post-Underground life. From opening in 1865, it was under the control of the Great Eastern Railway, and mainly used to ferry agricultural products from the farmlands of Essex to the fringes of London. In 1949, it was poached by the Underground and became the easternmost point of the Central line – although British Rail continued to run steam trains on the line until it was electrified in 1957. 

There’s just something about the Piccadilly line and abandoned Tube stations, because here’s a fourth one. Once nestled between Knightsbridge and South Kensington, it suffered a similar fate to Down Street, in that it was too close its neighbours to ever be truly successful. When the General Strike hit in 1926, Brompton Road shut down for five months, and eventually closed in 1934 after the modernisation of Knightsbridge station.

British Museum station stood on the opposite side of High Holborn to the modern Holborn Tube station, and was opened in 1900. British Museum was run by the Central London Railway, and Holborn was run by the Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Railway, and whilst the two would ideally have been connected, they weren’t, due to tunnel alignment problems arising from the latter’s route to another of London’s now abandoned Tube stations: Aldwych, once again ruining things for everyone.

Off to the Metropolitan line now, where we could have picked from three abandoned Tube stations: Lord’s, Marlborough Road, and the original Swiss Cottage. All were formerly on the Metropolitan line between Finchley Road and Baker Street, and all closed in 1939-1940 when a new stretch of the Bakerloo opened up a route to Stanmore (now the northern end of the modern Jubilee line), thus easing congestion on the line.