The Ghost Stations on the London Underground

The Ghost Tube map

Dotted around London are unused and abandoned London Underground stations that were once opened to the public but then for a variety of reasons closed.
In recent years these stations have become popular with a variety of people intrigued by the presence of ghost stations on the Underground network.
Transport for London does not say exactly how many there is, but estimate around 40, although it is not clear what is the state of repair of many of these stations.
Transport for London have recently become aware that the stations are considerable financial assets in the increasingly crowded London Streets. Brompton Road Station owned by the Ministry of Defence was sold to a Ukrainian Billionaire for  53 million pounds in 2013.

Many of the stations have been virtually demolished above and below ground but here is a small list of the more interesting ones.

Aldwych (Strand) Station

One of the more recent stations to close is Aldwych  (many people pass by and know it by its the old name Strand station) in 1994 and since then has  become very popular with Film and Television companies.

Films and television productions that have been shot at Aldwych include:

Creep (2004)
V for Vendetta (2006)
The Good Shepherd (2006)
Atonement (2007)
28 Weeks Later (2007)
The Edge of Love (2008)
Mr Selfridge (2013)
Sherlock (2014)

Most of the stations are owned by Transport for London , however  the odd station like Brompton Road was sold to the War Office on 1938 and was used by the Ministry of Defence.

A development group The Old London Underground Company proposed turning buildings into a restaurant and turn the underground section into an attraction.
However the site was sold by the Ministry of Defence in 2013 for 53 millions pounds.

Façade of Down Street

Down Street in Piccadilly open in 1907, but then closed in 1932 due to lack of use, however it played a part in the war effort by being home to Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet.

The surface building was on Down Street, just off Piccadilly in Mayfair. In 1939, the platforms were bricked up  used as an underground bunker. It was also used by The Emergency Railway Committee.

Mark Lane near Tower Hill has been almost completely demolished since it closed in 1967, all the remains above ground is a gated off piece of a pedestrian subway.
It is named after Mark Lane, the street on which it is located, west of the modern Tower Hill station that replaced it in 1967.

York Road

York Road near Kings Cross that closed in 1932 is still in relatively good state of repair due to recent development of King’s Cross.

York Road tube station opened in 1906 and was one of the original stations on the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR).

It had its entrance at the corner of York Road the surface buildings are still visible, the station remained open for weekday traffic 1932 when it closed permanently.

British Museum

British Museum tube station was a station on the London Underground’s Central line, located on Bury Place and close to the British Museum in Bloomsbury. The station was closed in 1933,  33 years after opening.

It was opened on 30 July 1900 by the Central London Railway (CLR) with its entrance located at 133 High Holborn (now the Nationwide Building Society), near the junction of High Holborn and New Oxford Street.

British Museum station was used up to the 1960s as a military administrative office and emergency command centre.

King William Street Station is one of the most short-lived and oldest on the list.  Opened in 1890 as the Northern terminus of the City and South London railway ,the first deep-level underground railway in London and  the world’s first electric underground line . Its long passage under the Thames was considered  a wonderful example of  Victorian engineering.

It was located in the City of London, on King William Street, just south of the present Monument station. When King William Street was in operation the next station to the south was Borough and the southern terminus of the line was Stockwell.

King William Street opened on 18 December 1890 , however the construction of the station layout and tunnels severely restricted capacity leading to the station being closed on 24 February 1900.

The original station building was demolished in the 1930s, although the parts of the station below ground were converted for use as a public air-raid shelter during World War II.