London’s Deepest Tube Station

Londons deepest tube station is ‘North End’, also known as ‘Bull and Bush’. You may have been past it but you won’t have got on or got off there, because its one of the London underground’s ghost stations. It was never completed and never even opened. It’s on the Northern line between Hampstead and Golders Green and is 68 metres deep from the surface. If you were to visit, you would have to descend 197 steps, whereupon you would find two partially completed platforms.

It was originally conceived in 1903 but when the nearby proposed housing development was cancelled it was deemed financially unviable and work was stopped in 1906 before the lift shafts were sunk and before any surface buildings were constructed. Services on the line started in 1907, running through the unfinished station. And so it sat for 50 years, until it was chosen as a control room for civil defence aimed at keeping the transport network running should there have been a nuclear attack, and as a floodgate control room.

A surface entrance blockhouse was built where stairs led to to a 33 metre shaft that contained a spiral staircase and a lift. Work started in 1954 but was only partially completed once again and stopped in 1955 after someone realised that if a H – bomb did drop on London there would probably be no transport network left to control.

The floodgate control room, however, was completed and opened in 1956 and was maintained until 1984, after which it became obsolete when the Thames barrier opened and the site was abandoned once again.

Today the stairs still have lighting and could be used as an emergency exit from the line. The only evidence of activity is graffiti from vandals and a few footprints in the dust from the occasional urban explorer who has made the rather risky 800m trek down the line from the next station.