A visit to Aldwych is a never forgotten experience for fans of the Underground system – and you might just recognise it from the movies.
As well as starring in London Transport Museum’s Hidden London tour, the station’s empty corridors, ticket hall, and platforms have featured on screen in Sherlock, Luther and Bodies to movies like Superman IV, Atonement, 28 Weeks Later, and Patriot Games.
The passenger lift at Aldwych station that you can visit as part of the London Transport Museum’s Hidden London tours. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
And when Nazi bombs were falling on London its tunnels were used to store precious treasures from the British Museum including the famous Elgin Marbles from The Parthenon.
When it opened in 1907 on the site of the demolished Royal Strand Theatre, the station was originally called Strand.
Before it was built – at the corner of Surrey Street and The Strand – there were grand plans to link it first to trains heading north to Alexandra Palace, then to the City of London and finally under the river to Waterloo.
Visitors can walk past the old posters last seen by commuters in 1994 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
But permission for the schemes was never granted to Strand station stood alone on a spur of the Piccadilly Line shuttling passengers to and from nearby Holborn.
Now Grade II listed, it boasts the distinctive ox-blood terracotta tiles and wide semi-circular windows of Leslie Green’s iconic Edwardian stations.
Like many of the Underground’s shuttered Tube stops it was closed because of underuse.
Strand station was on a spur of the Piccadilly line shuttling to and from Holborn (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
It was considered for closure as early as the 1920s and by 1962 it ran only on weekdays at peak hours.
Then in 1994 the £3m cost of replacing the lifts was considered too high and it closed permanently.
Plans to restore the station to an inter-war look with old London Underground rolling stock taking tourists up and down the disused tracks came to nothing – although an old Northern line carriage did roll up and down for the movie sets.
Aldwych Tube station was originally called Strand when it opened in 1907 and it is now Grade II listed. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Now expert guides take groups through the fascinating history and roles that Aldwych station has played for nearly 120 years.
That includes serving as a bomb shelter during both world wars and protecting art treasures from The National Gallery from German bombs in 1917.
Perhaps its origins beneath an old theatre explains the sightings of a woman believed to be Victorian actress Francis Maria Kelly who reportedly appears in a state of despair.
The station features in a pivotal scene in Geoffrey Housegold’s novel Rogue Male which has an enemy agent pursue the hero repeatedly using the shuttle service on the branch line before chasing him through the station and being electrocuted on the track.
Now for £45, visitors can descend to the time capsule platforms, tunnels, ticket hall, and walkways, passing decades-old advertising posters frozen in time since they were last read by London commuters.
