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There’s a locked door on the eastbound platform of the Chancery Lane station of the London Underground. The door is unassuming, sturdy and white.
Behind it’s a vast set of stairs resulting in a roughly mile-long maze of tunnels constructed within the Forties that have been first meant to function a World War II shelter and later used for espionage, the storage of 400 tons of presidency paperwork and telecom companies.
Welcome to the Kingsway Exchange tunnels, set roughly 100 toes beneath avenue degree within the middle of London, sprawling beneath the Underground’s Central Line. Soon they may enter a brand new chapter: Angus Murray, the proprietor of the complicated, who purchased the tunnels final summer season, has utilized for planning permission to the native authorities along with the structure agency WilkinsonEyre to show the tunnels right into a vacationer vacation spot that would deal with tens of millions of individuals a 12 months.
Mr. Murray’s London Tunnels is planning to take a position a complete of 220 million kilos (about $275 million) on restoring and preserving the tunnels, in addition to including expertise for artwork installations and different points of interest. Mr. Murray hopes to open the complicated in 2027, and stated that it might have the ability to host momentary artwork exhibitions, style exhibits and extra.
At the second, coming into the tunnels requires driving a small elevator tucked behind a facet door in an alleyway off a large avenue in central London. (Visitors to the attraction would use a special, greater entrance, Mr. Murray stated.)
When the elevator doorways open, you step right into a World War II-era tunnel — considered one of 10 civilian shelters proposed by the British authorities after the start of the Blitz, the eight-month bombing of London by the Germans that began in September 1940. The tunnels have been by no means used as shelters. By the time they have been accomplished in 1942, the Blitz was over.
During the Cold War, the British authorities instructed its phone division, which later turned British Telecom, to arrange a secret communications system within the tunnels that would survive a nuclear assault. The well-known hotline between the Kremlin and the White House ran via the complicated, in accordance with the venture’s web site. Some of the telephone alternate’s gear within the tunnels nonetheless survives at present, despite the fact that it hasn’t been used since a minimum of the Nineteen Eighties.
“The thought was that it might present a level of safety,” stated Martin Dixon, a trustee for Subterranea Britannica, a charity that paperwork and tries to protect underground areas.
“If the Cold War had became one thing extra severe, it might have allowed communications on some degree to proceed,” Mr. Dixon, who joined Subterranea Britannica about 40 years in the past, stated.
The tunnels beneath the Chancery Lane station of the tube are greater than a mile lengthy and in some locations have a diameter of just about 25 toes. Those dimensions make them among the many largest units of tunnels constructed for folks in a metropolitan metropolis, Mr. Murray stated.
“They have an interesting historical past,” he stated.
For a gaggle of Post Office and telecoms staff within the a long time after World War II, the tunnel complicated turned a office, some elements of which have survived. In one room, the stuffy odor of an previous carpet is inescapable. Another nonetheless holds the remnants of a canteen. Yet one other has pretend home windows framing photographs of nature as decorations. There are nonetheless places of work, in addition to rooms the place staff might spend the evening.
Some elements of the tunnels are lined with pretend partitions, and doorways with nothing behind them. The impact isn’t not like watching a scene from the dystopian Apple TV+ present “Severance.”
A bar the place postal staff might drink can also be nonetheless there, and Mr. Murray stated he hoped to revive it and make it London’s deepest underground bar.
The tunnels’ communication operation turned out of date within the Nineteen Eighties, and in 2008 British Telecom put the tunnels up on the market. BT staff used to go down into the complicated up till the Nineties to examine for fireplace security and different situations. The tunnels have been in any other case vacant.
Many particulars of the brand new attraction nonetheless should be ironed out, however Mr. Murray stated the price of the expertise would in all probability be in the identical value vary as that of different main vacationer websites in London. (The Tower of London’s entry charge is about $40, and Westminster Abbey’s is about $36.)
Mr. Dixon, of Subterranea Britannica, stated he was excited concerning the prospect of the Kingsway Exchange turning into an attraction — supplied it’s protected and the historical past is preserved.
“I’ve seen hundreds of underground areas, from the mundane to the spectacular,” he stated. The Kingsway alternate is especially attention-grabbing, he added, due to all of the totally different capabilities it had. “It performed its half in World War II, and was able to play its half within the Cold War.”
