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| A Sunday just before lockdown began: even the public areas were quiet! |
A busy station in the heart of the City of London, with tube and railway lines, is hardly a secret. However, behind the public areas, there are indeed secrets to be found.
Moorgate is one of the older London Underground stations: it opened in 1865, two years after the very first Underground services began. In 1900, the City & South London line from Stockwell extended to
Moorgate (known as Moorgate Street until 1924), because its former
terminus at King William Street could no longer cope with the volume of
passengers. The line would go on to be extended to Angel, and eventually
became the much longer Northern Line of today.
The
Great Northern & City mainline rail line from Finsbury Park opened
at the start of the twentieth century. Despite ambitious plans to link
it into other parts of the network, it remained fairly isolated. Only in
the 1970s was it connected to the main line north; services now run to
Hertford and beyond.
The station would continue to be altered and refurbished in the century or so since. The result: hidden and disused tunnels, traces of old decoration and advertising, and the relics of previous projects.
Perhaps the most extraordinary survivor, unique in the London Underground system, is an entire Greathead shield still in place. The Greathead shield is a type of tunnelling shield, providing temporary support while the next section of a tunnel is dug. Civil engineer James Henry Greathead's innovation was to build a cylindrical shield, where earlier ones had been rectangular. This one was left here in 1902 when plans to extend the tunnel were abandoned. Turn in the other direction, and the current platform and buffers stretch out ahead.
Faded signage is painted on neglected corridor walls; although the odd touch of graffiti has been added.
A lift shaft, out of service since 1922,
is now empty and used for ventilation. The disused tunnel leading to it
has traces of old decor.
Long out of use, a former pedestrian subway still bears the remnants of a few advertising posters. Even Lifebuoy couldn't keep this face clean!
After the end of our tour, a peep through the barrier showed that Moorgate station hasn't finished changing just yet.
I visited the usually out-of-bounds parts of Moorgate station on a Hidden London tour by London Transport Museum.
3 comments:
That's so interesting, thank you. Marvellous that the Greathead Shield was left in place.
And what became of the blind tunnel, where the infamous crash happened? 🤔
It's still there. Platform 9, which is used by Great Northern.
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