Hidden London
STEFANIE FOSTER delves into the London Transport Museum’s new Hidden London virtual tours of disused Underground stations, with access for all
STEFANIE FOSTER joins one of London Transport Museum’s new virtual tours of disused Tube stations.
With 158 years of history, the world’s oldest underground railway has no shortage of stories to tell.
As well as the London Underground’s 270 open stations, the spider’s web subterranean network of dark tunnels and platforms conceals around 40 ‘ghost’ stations. Here, those stations which fell out of regular use or were superseded by newer incumbents lie dormant, seen only in rare glimpses from a passing train.
In some cases, these stations act as time capsules to London’s wartime past, with many used as public shelters or underground offices during the Second World War. Some have even become filming locations over the years - for everything from music videos to zombie movies and Bond epics.
Given the rich and extensive history that is hidden away under the streets of London, it was a natural and welcome development six years ago when the London Transport Museum launched its Hidden London programme of tours, taking in these otherwise secret spaces.
It was the brainchild of the museum’s Assistant Director for Collections & Engagement Chris Nix (who has clocked up more than 21 years at the LTM) and a group of colleagues, who realised that they could turn their passion for these inspiring spaces into experiences for the general public.
Nix explains: “We realised we could just make these tours about holes in the ground and a certain number of people would be interested in that.
“Or we could just make it about the fascinating histories of the people who have used that hole in the ground or called it home in a time of war.
“Or we could look at the fabulous things that are down there that have survived, such as the tiles and the design features.
“But if we made it about all those things, then we could open up many more sites that wouldn’t just be interesting as a hole in the ground or just be interesting for their social history, we could also broaden the appeal to a much bigger audience. By taking that approach, we’ve been rewarded by a lot of people wanting to come and see these spaces.”
The decision has clearly paid off - nearly 100,000 tickets have been sold for Hidden London tours since their launch and the programme has a committed following, with many of its fans wanting to visit every site on offer - sometimes more than once!
But, as with the main museum in Covent
Garden and the rest of the tourism industry, the Coronavirus pandemic changed all the team’s plans for tours in 2021.
In fact, in February last year, the museum had just promoted a new walking tour of London, taking in a number of the closed stations from above ground and putting many of the deep-level tours into context.
But no sooner had all the tickets been sold, than the country was plunged into lockdown and all the money had to be refunded (thankfully they were able to resume some walking tours in the brief reprieve from restrictions over the summer).
What became clear very quickly was that you couldn’t hope to take groups of people
into cramped and relatively inaccessible underground spaces while socially distancing. Live tours just wouldn’t be possible.
“In the first week of lockdown, myself and my colleagues in the senior leadership team suddenly had to move all of our meetings onto Zoom,” says Nix.
“Every day we were doing a kind of daily situation meeting, and I went from never having used Zoom and quite hating the idea of it to thinking… I can see how we could use this for something more fun.”
The Hidden London Hangouts were soon born - a weekly YouTube event with Nix and the team talking about disused stations and their history.
It’s been so popular that the team are now on their third series of videos. You can watch them at http:// bit.ly/ HiddenLondonHangouts
(although Nix suggests starting at the end of the first series and working backwards, because they’ve improved as they went on!).
But within two weeks of launching the hangouts, Nix faced a problem. He’d promised a tour of Brompton Road station to a group of museum patrons - an exclusive list of individuals who donate significant sums to the museum each year. As a registered charity, the museum is dependent upon this kind of support, but the tour clearly couldn’t go ahead.
However, Nix had visited the site previously, and had taken enough photographs and video footage that he suggested conducting a tour via Zoom. The patrons loved it… and it wasn’t long before Nix was talking to museum colleagues about how they could replicate this experience for the general public.
By the end of July, Brompton Road station was available as a virtual tour and tickets were selling out fast. With so many people desperate for some escapism outside the walls of their home, what better than taking them somewhere they wouldn’t have been able to visit in person, even without a pandemic?
Brompton Road (on the former Great Northern Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, closed in 1934) had long been on Nix’s list of stations where it would be too difficult to
It’s no longer reliant on you having to physically be able to access the space. So, for older people or people with access needs, all of a sudden you have a way of coming on the tour.
Chris Nix, Assistant Director for Collections & Engagement, London Transport Museum
run physical tours, because it’s a relatively inaccessible location. Fans of Hidden London knew of the site and were desperate to visit, but it just wasn’t possible to do safely.
“All of the bonuses stacked up from there. We could retrain the team to deliver the virtual tours and all of a sudden, the things that we were used to having to apologise for over the past five years were no longer a problem.
“It’s no longer reliant on you having to physically be able to access the space. So, for older people or people with access needs, all of a sudden you have a way of coming on the tour. Age restrictions due to health and safety no longer apply. As long as you’re able to follow the narrative and enjoy looking at the visuals, whether you are eight or 80, you can come on the tour.
“It’s also less expensive for us to deliver them, so the cost is slightly lower than the physical tours.”
There is also no barrier to those living outside of London, which the team quickly discovered when they started running virtual tours and found that 50% of the attendees were from overseas, joining the tour from as far away as Singapore, Toronto and Australia.
Up until recently, the museum was only offering tours of sites that had not previously been available as physical tours - for example, those sites where access would be too dangerous for the public or where there wouldn’t be enough space for a group of 12 people.
Part of the reason for this was that they didn’t want to destroy the current Hidden London physical tour business by giving people a cheaper, easier option virtually.
But, as with many similar discussions
While the virtual tours clearly can’t offer that sense of privilege that you get from being able to enter spaces the public normally aren’t allowed into, and nor can they re-create the smells or sensations of being there for yourself, the museum has done an impressive job of creating something new.
The combination of photographs, original drawings and diagrams, and live commentary makes it feel a bit like watching a documentary being made just for you.
There is no video footage on the King William Street tour, but many of the others include first person walk-throughs of the stations, giving you a real sense of being there for yourself (or at least as close as you can get on Zoom!).
The combination of photographs, original drawings and diagrams, and live commentary makes it feel a bit like watching a documentary being made just for you.
However, King William Street has a particular interest in that it is currently being used as an access point for the £ 655 million Bank station extension project, enabling work to take place without having to close Bank station for long periods. As such, part of the virtual tour includes photographs and information about the upgrade work.
And just as in the physical tours, there is the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the tour, with the knowledgeable guides.
Nothing can replace the physical tours of these special places, but it’s pleasing to see something that was once inaccessible to many people now available for all. And that is a benefit set to last well beyond the pandemic.
about whether people will still want to meet in person in the future when they could just do everything via Zoom, Nix believes there will continue to be a market for both, even once the pandemic is over.
“Everything we’ve done, from the book
Hidden London: Discovering the Forgotten Underground,
published in 2019] to the virtual tours, we very carefully thought about how it sits alongside the existing offer so that we don’t either spoil it for people or wreck that part of the business, which has been very good for us.
“After we’d launched the third set of virtual tours, just from the feedback we’d had, we were instantly reassured that it felt like a different and complementary offer. We had decided by September that even when we thought we might be running live tours again by now, we’d still do both. So, I think we will now always run virtual tours.”
On that basis, the museum launched Aldwych station as a virtual tour in February.
Aldwych was the first station to become a physical tour even before the Hidden London brand was launched. It offers a wealth of historical interest - during the Second World War it was home to the British Museum’s collection, china from Buckingham Palace, artefacts from the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon royal burial site, and even the Elgin marbles. But some of the site is not accessible on the public tours, giving the virtual option its own unique selling point.
It quickly became apparent that the virtual platform offered possibilities that the physical experience didn’t. Aside from access to inaccessible sites, there is also the opportunity to show video content and historical photographs or diagrams to help put facts into context, without the logistical challenge of projectors and other equipment in dark, damp and cramped spaces.
Nix was once a primary school teacher and his passion for sharing knowledge is crystal clear. He has designed the Hidden London tours ( both virtual and physical) to take into account our different learning styles.
Some people are spatial thinkers who understand facts better if they can gain an understanding of the setting being described. Maps and diagrams of a location are perfect for these types.
Others like to know about the social context and human stories, so they have historical pegs on which to hang their new knowledge.
This is what museums such as the LT are all about - sharing knowledge with as many people as possible in a way that they will remember and pass on.
Nix explains: “What I really like about Hidden London is that you can access it from free all the way through to quite a considered price point for some of our more exclusive physical tours.
“But, as an educational charity, that’s what we like to do - share our knowledge and make it as accessible as possible. I think the virtual tours have been the point where I feel really good about Hidden London being very accessible now.”