Tom writes, "Subterranean London is a strange and fascinating world, a labyrinth of underground tunnels that range from Victorian sewers to wartime bunkers. Among them is the famous London Underground network, known as the Tube due to the shape of its deep level tunnels. The network boasts around 40 ghost stations, from including entire stations that closed decades ago as well as disused platforms hidden behind iron gates in still operational hubs. This article looks at 13 of London's most impressive abandoned underground stations."
If you like this, check out Peter Laurie's classic Beneath the City Streets, a comprehensive list of subterranean shelters, bunkers, tunnels, and tubes (I drew on it heavily for Pirate Cinema).
To a pedestrian walking through Whitechapel, nothing remains to indicate where St Mary’s Station once stood. Flattened by a German bomb during WWII, while people cowered on the disused platforms below, the remains of the building were broken down and carted off in the ’40s, leaving no trace of the former entrance. Below the Earth though, it’s a different story. Closed down in 1938 and largely bricked up during the Blitz, St Mary’s nonetheless survives – a collection of grim, graffiti-encrusted corridors and tracks leading nowhere. In the 70-odd years since its abandonment, TFL have routinely repurposed various bits of the line, leaving very little to mark the resting place of this old East End station. What does remain is cold and bleak and difficult to access. However, a tiny portion still remains visible to those travelling on the District Line: an old connecting line known as St Mary’s Curve can just about be glimpsed when arriving at Aldgate station from the Western side.
13 Abandoned Stations & Disused Platforms of the London Underground [Urban Ghosts]
(Thanks, Tom!)
(Images: Bowroaduk)
