Rather like the ‘Ally Pally’, the branch line had mixed fortunes and neither the Great Northern nor its successor, the London & North Eastern Railway, quite seemed to know what to do with it. Consequently the LNER was probably relieved when in 1935 a long-standing idea turned into a concrete proposal. First of all this involved the transfer of the LNER lines to High Barnet and Edgware to the jurisdiction of London Transport who would electrify them as an extension of the Northern Line tube from Archway. The extension between Archway and East Finchley opened early in July 1939 but the new station at Highgate was not ready for public use until 1941. Even then it was incomplete.
The Alexandra Palace branch was added to this scheme at a later date. A considerable amount of preliminary work was done but in the austere economic conditions that prevailed after the Second World War, the modernisation of the branch somehow slipped through the net. The decision not to proceed with electrification was taken in 1953 and the LNER and then the Eastern Region of British Railways continued to operate rather antiquated steam trains to Alexandra Palace until the passenger service was withdrawn in 1954. The puff, however, had most certainly gone out of them by that time. Freight services were withdrawn some years later. Had the Alexandra Palace branch been electrified, it is likely that it would still be a useful part of the Underground network.
The Highgate Northern Line Station was somewhat lower than the high-level Alexandra Palace branch platforms at Highgate and escalators joined the tube platforms with those used by the LNER/British Railways trains. The intention was that another escalator would reach to street level but this had to wait until 1957.
Boarded-up tunnel mouth at the north end of abandoned Highgate Station. The line from here to Alexandra Palace was due to become part of the Northern Line, but in the event this never happened.
As part of the preliminary electrification and modernisation work for the Alexandra Palace branch, the Highgate LNER station was rebuilt in a modern concrete idiom. Conductor rails were in position for much of the route from Highgate towards Alexandra Palace, as were supports for lineside cables, but the power was never switched on. Highgate LNER station stood in a cutting with tunnels at either ends of the platforms and even after its total rebuilding it always seemed to be a bit dark, damp and unwelcoming. This part of London is hilly and possesses many large, mature trees which help to add areas of shade and a considerable sense of atmosphere.
It is this station which seems to be haunted; voices have been heard; people down there have related how they felt they were being watched by invisible but malevolent eyes. There have also been occasional reports of the sound of passing steam trains long after the track was lifted. Those claiming to have heard such noises were often people living in houses backing onto the line. The sounds of voices have been heard on many occasions not only at Highgate but also where the intermediate stations had once been situated. This was particularly understandable where noises were heard in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. The locals there were among the most vehement protestors when plans were publicised to close the line although the truth was that they did not actually use the services very much.
The track formation between the intermediate stations at Cranley Gardens and Muswell Hill is in use as a public footpath.
HYDE PARK CORNER
The Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opened on 15 December 1906. It was created out of an amalgamation of the Brompton & Piccadilly Circus and the Great Northern and Strand Railways. A new piece of line was inserted between Piccadilly Circus and the vicinity of Holborn to give through running at that time between Finsbury Park and Hammersmith. This route formed the nucleus of the later much-extended Piccadilly Line.
Early one morning in the 1970s a couple of maintenance workers on the night shift at Hyde Park Corner tube station were enjoying a well-earned rest with a mug of tea in the staff office. At that time the station entrance was locked to prevent public entry and all was quiet when they were amazed to hear the sound of the escalator in motion. They had just spent a couple of hours doing repair work on it. This had necessitated switching the power off and yet here was the selfsame escalator moving, something which clearly it could only do if the power had been restored. No one else was on the premises. How did this happen?
Although this particular occurrence seems to have been a one-off, staff who work at this station report there are one or two strange spots which are inexplicably cold, even on the hottest of summer days. Staff manning the station when it opens early in the morning or towards the end of services at night, claim that they have sensed what they describe as ‘evil forces’ and that they are being observed by unseen eyes. Some workers have also reported a part of the station where the sound of girls crying can sometimes be heard, often when the station is closed to passengers at night. They try to avoid that part of the station at these times.
Hyde Park Corner tube is very handy for those who like a ghost with their pint of beer. Tucked away off the beaten track but close to the station is The Grenadier pub in Wilton Row. Although there are dozens of London pubs with stories of hauntings, that of The Grenadier is among the best known. The pub was once the officers’ mess for the nearby barracks of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. On one occasion, an officer was caught cheating at cards. In their rather curious code of honour and conduct, the officers regarded such behaviour as that of an out-and-out bounder and cad. Those present decided to mete out rough justice there and then. He was flogged, beaten up and ejected from the front door, only to die shortly afterwards of his injuries. His ghost moved in and stayed when the barracks was converted to a pub. September, which was the month of his death, is the best time for those keen to make his acquaintance. Not only have successive landlords reported the build-up of an ‘atmosphere’ and inexplicable bangs and knocks as August turns into September but a shadowy black figure has manifested itself on many occasions, even terrifying the formidable German shepherd dog which one landlord kept as a guard against intruders. On one occasion, no less a dignitary than a chief superintendent of Scotland Yard was prepared to go on record as having said that he had witnessed the ghost. Such a public utterance might be viewed by the top brass of the constabulary with some disapproval. Perhaps the officer knew by this time that his career was going no further and that he had nothing to lose.
The rebuilt high-level Underground platforms at Highgate that never saw underground trains. It would not be easy to get a better view as they don’t want you to see it.
Footpath along the track bed of the abandoned ‘Ally Pally’ branch near Cranley Gardens. Ghostly steam trains have been heard on windy nights.
Former entrance of Hyde Park Corner on Knightsbridge, now used as a restaurant.
ICKENHAM
Ickenham is a bijou outer suburb which manages to retain some semblance of its previously rural village character. Running through the parish is the little river Pinn. The present parish church dates from the fourteenth century and remains small, an indication that Ickenham was a tiny settlement until the Metropolitan Railway came along and started the process whereby it would change forever. Large-scale residential development began in the 1920s with the sale of a number of sizeable country estates. Nearby is Swakeleys, a great Jacobean mansion completed in 1638 and now offices.
With services on both the Metropolitan and Piccadilly Lines, Ickenham lies not far from the western extremity of these lines, being the last but one stop before Uxbridge. The Metropolitan Line station opened on 25 September 1905. At first, befitting the essentially rustic nature of the place, no station had been provided and when, responding somewhat reluctantly to local protests, a stopping place was opened by the company, it was designated a mere ‘halt’. Few people used it and the Metropolitan Railway erected a flagpole complete with a large red flag to let potential passengers know that trains halted there. On one occasion, the flag flapped so wildly in the wind that a horse being led along a nearby road bolted, injuring the man leading it. After a civil ac
tion, the Metropolitan was ordered to take the flag down. Piccadilly Line services began running on 23 October 1933.
On the face of it, Ickenham and its modest station, rebuilt in the early 1970s, seem reassuringly ordinary, perhaps even sedate, most definitely not the locale for a haunting. Impressions can be deceptive. One morning in 1951 during the night-time hours when the station was closed to passengers, an electrician was busily engaged in maintenance work on the platform. His was lonely work and even a man with little imagination might occasionally have wondered if there was anything lurking menacingly beyond the comforting pool of light shed by the lamp close by. He worked away stolidly, accustomed to what would now be called ‘antisocial hours’ and the blanket of silence and the sense of emptiness which descended on the Underground in the hiatus between the last trains of the previous day and the first of the morrow.
He may have been of a stoical nature but even he was rather startled when, standing up for a moment and looking round, he saw a middle-aged woman close by and apparently watching him with considerable interest. He thought that her clothes were a trifle old-fashioned and there was enough light for him to note that she wore a red scarf. The woman, apparently aware that he had noticed her, then gestured for him to follow her. Perhaps thinking that she was a benighted traveller who had arrived on the last train and had somehow contrived to be locked in when the station closed down for the night, the electrician followed her along the platform, keen to help. Not a word was said as he followed her up the stairs but no sooner had she reached the last step than she vanished into thin air. The electrician, bewildered and not a little frightened, was left wondering what he had seen or even whether he had actually seen anything at all.
It was little solace to him to learn that the woman with the red scarf had been glimpsed many times over the years by other London transport workers. They thought that she was the ghost of a woman who, many years earlier, had fallen from the platform and died instantly when she hit the electrified rail. Belated passengers arriving at Ickenham on the last trains of the night also claim to have caught sight of the figure of a woman, some distance away, gesticulating to get their attention but once she had got it, vanishing.
Ickenham looking towards Uxbridge. An unlikely location for a haunting?
KENNINGTON
Kennington is a mixed, largely residential district of south London with a history dating back to Norman times. Today’s visitor could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing there before the nineteenth century. In fact Kennington Common was the location for many public hangings. These attracted large crowds and the present St Mark’s Church stands on the site of the gallows. Kennington Park stands on part of the old common.
Kennington was an intermediate station on the City & South London Railway which opened in 1890. This line was the world’s first electric tube railway and, with some minor changes, it went on to become the Bank branch of the Northern Line. In 1926 a new piece of the tube network arrived at Kennington. This was in the form of an extension under the Thames and via Waterloo of the old Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway. Both routes became part of the Northern Line in 1937.
A feature of Kennington which is little known to the travelling public is the Kennington Loop. This was built as part of the extension from Charing Cross and is a complicated, or some would say delightfully simple, means of ensuring that the paths of trains on both the southbound routes of the Northern Line do not conflict where they come together at Kennington. Southbound trains from the Charing Cross direction travel in a tunnel under the tube tunnels containing the City Branch lines and then run into their own platform at Kennington. They can then continue southwards by joining the line in the Morden direction but many of them terminate at Kennington. After ensuring that all passengers have been detrained, the drivers of the terminating trains then advance into the single-line tunnel which plunges under the Morden route and then literally loops back on itself so that northbound Charing Cross trains are now facing in the right direction without having caused any conflicting traffic movements.
The original street-level building at Kennington built by the City & South London Railway. It is the only station on this line to have kept its distinctive dome feature.
Empty Northern Line train entering Kennington loop.
Trains for the Charing Cross route have their own platform at Kennington. However, it is sometimes necessary to keep the empty trains at signals before admitting them to this northbound platform. Train crew do not like the loop. Its sharp curves mean that the wheels emit a loud and irksome flange squeal accentuated by the narrow confines of the tube. More sinister, however, are the frequent reports from train crews about the threatening atmosphere in the loop. Passengers are never allowed to travel round the loop but despite that, the men and women working trains along this piece of line are sometimes seriously disconcerted by not always being sure they are alone. The worst place for mysterious sounds and an evil atmosphere is when the empty trains are standing at the signal awaiting clearance to enter the Charing Cross platform. Tube trains are of course now one-person operated but a number of drivers who have followed procedure, and ensured that all passengers have alighted at the southbound-side platform, have heard the sound of doors between the carriages being opened and closed while their trains were waiting at the signals to enter the Charing Cross platform. Who or what opened and closed these doors?
King William Street facing Monument Station. The vast underground tunnel that links Bank Station and Monument Station runs the length of King William Street. Are there, as some people have commented, distinct spectral figures seen among the shadows?
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street …
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
KING WILLIAM STREET
King William Street, EC4, was laid out between 1829 and 1835 to provide an approach to then new London Bridge and it was named after the monarch of the time, the rather vacuous William IV who reigned from 1830-1837.
The tube station that formerly stood in this street was the City terminus of the City & South London Railway which ran under the Thames to Stockwell on the Surrey Shore, a distance of around three-and-a-half miles. This line was of international historical importance as the world’s first successful underground electric railway. It opened in 1890 but closed in 1900 when the line was extended in a northerly direction to Moorgate on a different alignment. It was thus an extremely early railway closure so it has had more time than most to gather its ghosts. The station stood at the junction of King William Street and what is now Monument Street. The building that housed the station facilities at street level has long since gone.
King William Street was a quaint little station with its wooden platforms, bijou locomotives and uninviting carriages known as ‘padded cells’ and it provided a host of operating problems, but even after trains were withdrawn it found ways to continue serving Londoners, even if it did so in a quiet, understated way. Commenting on the waste involved in such an early closure, The Railway Magazine of February 1901 asked whether or not the station and its associated tunnels could be used for the growing of mushrooms or as secure bonded warehouses. It slumbered on, however, without finding any such users, but hit the headlines in 1914 when someone who probably should have known better, that is the editor of the self-same Railway Magazine, suggested that the station and its tunnels contained a cell of ruthless enemy agents who, armed to the teeth with weapons and explosives, were planning to launch their own campaign of ethnic cleansing on the good folk living and working in the City. This absurd claim was taken seriously by the police and a search was undertaken but nothing untoward was found.
The idea of these tunnels and platforms gathering dust and memories while existing in a stat
e of suspended animation under the hustle and bustle of the City’s streets excited considerable public interest. In 1930 a privileged group of journalists was given a guided tour and found that much of what was below ground was just as it would have been when the closure took place, except that it was dirtier and somewhat damper. Perhaps most eerie was the signal box. This had twenty-two manually operated levers and was virtually intact.
Parts of the station below ground and its associated running tunnels were extensively modified and acted as air-raid shelters during the Second World War. When hostilities ended, the owners of the new office block at street level where the station had been all those years ago found that the subterranean parts of the station provide ideal conditions for the safe storage of documents.
The tube tunnels running to King William Street slumber on, gathering stalactites as the years pass by. Access to what is left below ground is strictly limited but those who have managed to gain entry have spoken about indistinct spectral figures seen among the shadows. Psychic mediums in the 1970s and 1980s claim they have made contact with one or more ghosts. In the whole of greater London, there are surely few other locations more redolent of the supernatural than what is left of the subterranean parts of this pioneering tube station, so long closed to the public and so long the haunt of who knows what?
Haunted London Underground Page 6