Down the tube

Far from being boring, London's subterranean railway holds a wealth of secrets and stories, as Padraig Lynch discovers on a tunnel-tastic tour. Photography by Rama Knight

In 1845, when a pamphlet was published advocating the “creation of a rail network under the streets of London”, a radical preacher named Dr Cumming called down “fire and brimstone” on such folly. “The end of the world would be hastened by the construction of underground railways burrowing into the infernal regions and thereby disturbing the Devil,” he declared.

Lisa, my guide from Insider London doesn’t look like an agent of the Devil. In fact, she has the appearance of a well-presented young schoolmistress. She does have the slightly pale complexion of someone who’s spent too long underground though, and when she describes the history and architecture of the Tube she trembles with a passion like that of an approaching train.

Lisa is going to take me on a journey back in time – through the early history of what some might call the real London Dungeon – and, let’s face it, some of the staff down here are a hell of a lot scarier than the thesps over by London Bridge! She knows her way around the Underground, with an intimate knowledge of its nooks and crannies – and the knack of making you feel as if you are there by bringing its past and characters vividly to life. Of course, the set dressing helps. If you ignore the digital advertising screens, much of the Tube still looks as it did at the turn of the 20th century.

We begin at Farringdon station on the Metropolitan line, the oldest underground in the world, built in 1863. It would have been a dark experience. The carriages were lit by jets of naked gas (isn’t that a little dangerous?) and driven by a coal-fired steam engine. Our imagination is getting fired up now too – as we approach the arches of King’s Cross we are starting to cough, our clothes covered in soot, and we arrive on the platform like a couple of smoked kippers… well, almost.

“It’s Dickensian,” I say, outraged. “How could anybody have travelled like this?” But oh no, Lisa tells me, steam trains were used on this line right up until the 1960s.

We are now standing on the neo-gothic platform of King’s Cross station, a 1920s map of the Underground spread out before us. It looks ridiculously rustic, quaint even. Why would a system that was designed to provide urban transport begin and often end way out in the sticks, and why were some stations built so close to each other?

Because, Lisa explains, the Underground in its infancy resembled a snake pit where ruthless entrepreneurs with huge moustaches were locked in a Darwinian struggle to become the masters of the underworld. Stations were built next to each other apparently in an effort to force rivals out of business.

Scams were common. If a quicker buck was to be made by building under cheap farmland miles outside the city and selling the property above for a huge speculative profit they did it, regardless of the consequences for the travelling public. A proper Tube for the city was finally created with the Circle Line, but only after the Metropolitan and District lines received a huge subsidy from the city fathers.

This haphazard approach to planning has left a legacy of about 40 ghost stations – most of them were built to no real purpose – scattered all over the network. You will occasionally catch a fleeting glimpse of a ghost station as you travel between stops. The British Museum station was closed in 1933 after Holborn station, operated by an alternative company, proved better positioned and more convenient. But keep your eyes peeled between Holborn and Covent Garden and you’ll see it. It is said to be haunted, and has been the inspiration for some brilliantly ridiculous B-movies such as Death Line (1972), where a community of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers try to eat commuters.

Perhaps one of their antecedents was Whitaker Wright, who in 1898 was responsible for financing the Bakerloo line. A notorious swindler, the law finally caught up with him, and a sentence of seven years’ penal servitude was handed down at the Old Bailey. Minutes after the verdict was read out he collapsed and died – he had swallowed a cyanide capsule.

The history of the London Underground is filled with such stories. The real godfather of the Tube was Charles Tyson Yerkes, “the street car czar” of Chicago and a convicted embezzler. He narrowly escaped being lynched by a mob of angry investors in his home city. But it appears that he had the perfect CV for a boss of the Underground. He financed the electrification of the District Line and the building of the Piccadilly using “complicated financial instruments” (read bribery and kickbacks!).

Yerkes managed to bring most of the various lines under his control acquiring them from the separate operators. He also introduced the 2p standard fare, hence the “Tuppenny Tube”, which became a popular method of transport for all Londoners or “strap-handlers” as Yerkes condescendingly called his passengers. But enough of the dark side. Where are the visionaries, designers and engineers who succeeded in creating the world’s first underground rail system, often against the odds?

Having navigated the Victoria line we are now standing outside Oxford Circus station. In front of us are a series of arches (vaguely reminiscent of the McDonald’s logo) created by deep blood-red tiles. This is the work of the artist Leslie Green, and his tiled motifs became the distinctive feature of the underground. The blood-red is pertinent – perhaps inspired by the consumption he suffered from all his working life. It may have been the lead in the paint that finished him off at the tender age of 33.

If the Tube can be said to have had a golden age it probably began around the time that Green died. The new boss and successor to Yerkes, Frank Pick, seems to have been on the side of beauty. Pick created the world’s first “underground art movement”, commissioning posters by Man Ray, Edward Nash and Graham Sutherland, and the Tube became something of a vast public gallery for the travelling masses. Interestingly, Pick turned down a knighthood but accepted an honour from Stalin.

But his real genius was for design: in 1931 he paid Harry Beck, an unemployed electrical engineer, five guineas (about two weeks’ wages) for creating a new map of the Tube. Middle management hated it, but Beck’s brilliant idea – to imagine the Tube as a circuit of coloured lines independent of the geography above – was a huge hit with the public.

It still is. In 2006 it was voted the second-most popular design of all time by BBC viewers and is now a jealously guarded piece of intellectual property. Some claim that Tfl(Transport for London) has made more money from merchandising and selling rights to the map than they ever did by selling tickets! Poor Harry Beck never saw another penny.

Beck’s map is a joy to travel – mentally. I am doing so now, from the inside of a carriage of a stalled train on the Northern line (Bank branch). The tour is over. But we can’t leave. We are being “held by a red light” somewhere in the “infernal regions” of the tunnels.

Perhaps preacher Cumming was right – he also declared that “it is better to wait for the Devil than to make roads down into hell!”.

FOR MORE ON THE LONDON UNDERGROUND AND TUBE TOUR (TWO HOURS, £34.50/€39.50 PER PERSON), TOGETHER WITH MORE ALTERNATIVE LONDON TOURS, CHECK OUT www.INSIDER-WORLDWIDE.COM