Emma's Blog: More Hidden London

Saturday 3 February

Following last October’s Euston tour, I offered to treat Ray to a ticket to another one of the tours as a birthday present. Ray is cursed by having been born on Boxing Day and therefore doomed to a lifetime of birthday sidelining due to everyone being too exhausted/bloated to celebrate it much. I’ve always tried to make some effort to acknowledge his birthday but was ashamed to realise that I don’t think I’ve bought him a birthday present the past few years, so decided to redress the balance.

This tour was titled “Charing Cross: Access All Areas”. Its focus is the disused Jubilee Line areas at Charing Cross, plus the construction tunnel that runs under Trafalgar Square. We took the Elizabeth Line (useful service, this) from Reading to Tottenham Court Road and then walked down to Charing Cross. We had a bit of time to kill before our slot for the tour, so wandered briefly into Victoria Embankment Gardens. Amazing to think that this gateway was once actually at the water’s edge.

Gateway that used to mark the north bank of the Thames

Charing Cross was formerly, but is no longer, on the Jubilee Line; today it’s on the Bakerloo and Northern lines only (both older than the Jubilee). Several different underground stations seem to have been called Charing Cross: Strand (Northern line) and Trafagar Square (Bakerloo line) were combined when the Jubilee Line opened in 1979 and renamed Charing Cross, while the original Charing Cross tube station was renamed Embankment in 1976.

Original route of the Jubilee Line

The original Jubilee Line opened in 1979 and ran between Stanmore in the north to Charing Cross in the south, as per this from the closed area we visited at Charing Cross. Evidently it was actually supposed to have opened in 1977 to coincide with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee but overran by two years – according to our tour guide, this was due to a cock up in the construction of the new escalators at Charing Cross (which, ironically, were destined only to be in use for 20 years). (The Jubilee Line was originally going to be called the Fleet Line, but was renamed in honour of the Jubilee. One hopes that the impact of this patriotic gesture hadn't worn off a bit by the time the line eventually opened.)

The Jubilee Line extension opened in 1999, providing a connection through to the redeveloped London Docklands. The extension was started from Green Park, the last but one station on the original Jubilee Line, and bypassed Charing Cross. The reason for abandoning Charing Cross was something to do with tunnel alignment and avoiding twisty-turny bends under the Thames. This useful image that I nicked from the internet shows the current Jubilee Line; the new stations are to the right of Green Park.

The lead tour guide proved to be the same exuberant young chap from the Euston tour, though he split the talking with an assistant guide on this occasion. We started off by going down the stairs to the tube station concourse at CC. After another exciting being-led-through-usually-locked-doors moment, we found ourselves at the top of a set of escalators. We walked down these (they’re switched off now) into what was the Jubilee Line area.

The escalator we'd just walked down

The disused Jubilee Line area at Charing Cross

Although the Jubilee Line at Charing Cross is no longer on the live Tube network, its tunnels are still used for storing trains and its escalators and platforms are hired by TV and film companies. We paused in the above hall area to watch some video footage of various TV shows: I can’t remember all of them but they included an episode of Spooks I think, plus something showing Matt Damon running through a crowd (The Bourne Ultimatum?) plus the James Bond film Skyfall, in which Daniel Craig (or possibly his stunt double) slides down an escalator in pursuit of a baddie. Evidently the disused platforms and other areas get customised to represent whichever tube station is required for the production, as with the faked Circle and District Line sign below. The (empty) train in the platform picture had just pulled in when we got there; I think the guide said that the old platforms and tunnels are still used as holding bays for TfL stock.

One of the disused platforms. Train not in passenger use

The escalator used in Skyfall

Ah, British Rail

Fake Circle and District Line sign

For the next bit of the tour, we were taken into the construction tunnel that was dug in the 1970s to carry away spoil from the alterations to Charing Cross to accommodate the new Jubilee Line. According to the tour booklet, this was to allow the spoil to be loaded onto trucks in a quieter location rather than cluttering up the Strand. The tunnel goes right under Trafalgar Square, with a bend in the middle to avoid the foundations of Nelson’s Column. The unloading site was where the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery now is, and the last part of the tunnel has been blocked up and backfilled (bit of a shame - would have provided lots of material for an art heist movie).

The bend in the construction tunnel to avoid Nelson's Column

The blocked-off end of the tunnel

The last thing we were taken to see was the Craven Street ventilation shaft, built at the time of the Jubilee Line's construction to allow heat to escape from the tunnels. For this, we were issued with specially-reinforced caps as we had to duck under some low bars to get to it. According to the tour booklet, it’s almost as tall as Nelson’s column. Afterwards we walked round into Craven Street to identify the outside of the building that houses it.