London Under London

 

I stumbled across both of these books a few weeks ago and it's taken me awhile to read them but what they contained was absolutely fascinating. I never gave much thought to the goings-on underneath London streets but I have a whole new appreciate for those dark depths. 

Underground stations used duing air-raids and eventually became just like homes for people. Some essentially became communities- ‘Tilbury’ and ‘Mickey’s Shelter’ were areas that had people making order outo f the chaos. There were elected chairman and had shelter marshals and people who recorded everyday life underground. Some of my favorite sketches and paintings about the Underground are from Henry Moore.

Over 100 miles of underground rivers in London, both north and south of the Thames. Some feed into the Thames, some rose to ground level to supply ponds in various parks or the Serpentine in Hyde Park. You can still follow the courses of thses streams, from the hills that look down over London, through the gentle valleys and backyard ravine, to the Thames. Each of London’s underground rivers can be walked in an afternoon, though for some of them you should make it a long afternoon. You can check your course by the slight pressure of the gradient on your ankle. And should you tire, your feet aching, remember John Stow.

underground river

John Stow devoted a lifetime’s study to London and gave the more comprehensive picture of what London looked like before the Great Fire, including all the rivers that at one point were above ground and are now beneath. These include the Walbrook, The Fleet, The Tynbourne, Stanford Brooke, Effra (which reminds me of Watership Down for some reason), The Nieckinger and Earl’s Sluice.

Even though these rivers are underground, they are still incredibly important in aiding with flushing sewage out of London. London has always had a problem with waste, most glaring realized during the “Great Stink” of the 19^th century. The chapter called “Bowels of the Earth” had more awful puns about smells and excrement than I have ever seen before but also had incredible descriptions about what it’s like to travel through the bowels of London. “That’s what we call muck, down ‘ere. It collects and blocks everything. Ur job’s shoveling it up. Fancy it? Gotta wach it , though, even if you're only walking.” Imagine that being your job- although this is a job that has been part of London since the 1300s, when men called gong fermors would clean the streets and lanes of all dirt, dung and filth. But it was too little too late, the bowels of medieval London had become well and truly constipated. See what I mean about the bad puns?

Greenwich Foot Tunnel- cool and dark

Interestingly enough, there had been many people intent on improving London’s waste system, including the invention of the water closet in 1596 and a plan for a sewer system after the Great Fire but these were never adopted. It wasn’t until things were so terrible during the Victorian age that things began to get done. Today, the sewers that are under London are patched up version of the Victorian system. They’ve developed essentially robots/hovercrafts that patch up the narrower areas and men go down to unclog the larger areas. Yet the only reason that waste is able to be flushed out of London is thanks to those underground rivers and their waters.

The chapters on electricity, cable, post office trains, etc., were confusing and yet fascinating at the same time. The descriptions of how they created all the underground tunnels, including the Greenwich footpath under the Thames was absolutely fascinating. The Ackroyd book explained it a lot better than the older book. Essentially what they did was create a large, mechanical, metal version of a ship-worm. What it does is eat the timber of a ship, creating more space and then passes the wood through its body; its excreta is then used to bolster the fabric of the tunnel it has created.” Essentially what Marc Brunel did was create a larger version which would allowe workers, as the engine advanced, to carve out clay and then allowe a team of men in the rear to line the newly uncovered piece of tunnel with brick and stone. Although the system worked, there were many casualties, lots of injuries, frequent bouts of flooding and an eventual takeover by Brunel’s son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (BEST.NAME.EVER.)  But because of these tunnels, the post office was able to transport mail under the city streets, electricity and cable lines can run back and forth and keep the city lit and watching the BBC and ITV and in some of them, you can use to walk underneath the Thames without fear of getting too wet.

I have this t-shirt- naturally....

Of course, there must be attention paid to the Underground, the Tube, itself. The first line to ever be created was the Metropolitan Railway, and both books chronicled the massive undertaking it was to create this underground system ot trains. I already knew quite a lot about the creation of the underground but here are some of my favorite pieces of new trivia. Initially, there needed to be a way for the some and steam of the underground engine to be diverted and so engineers build a dummy pair of houses at 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens, W2. Identical to their adjoining houses, their facades consist of nothing more than a five-foot wall. Artificial windows and doors were built but behind the façade is the excess steam from the Metopolitan Line. Leinster Gardens is right next to where we stayed on the London trip- if only I had known! Additionally, the Underground used to have conductors shouting out the next stops since it was so hard to see out the dirty windows. One thing that you never think about is how dirty the Underground gets- and I don’t mean just mud and dirt from people’s feet. Each night, between 1:00-5:00 am, people clean up asbestos from the brake linings, human hair and skin, and what is left behind by signal crews, maintenance teams, engineering gangs, billboard men and cleaners, along with the millions of people who ride the Tube each day. The Underground Tube map that everyone knows so well is so much more geometrically than the actual twists and turns of the underground lines and tunnels, which is evidenced by anyone who has ever chaned lines at any major station. The underground has “ghost stations” and also passes through many burial grounds and plague pits, which just adds to the eerie effect it can have on people. Bill Bryson explains in "Notes from a Small Island" how you can get rid of friends for the day- give them the names of two underground stations and let them spend the afternoon traveling from one to the other without telling them that they were actually around the corner from each other above ground...

The Cabinet War Rooms are the most well-known underground shelters in London, other than the Tube, but there were also hundreds more shelters created during WWII that are now used for other things- Post Office stations, Doctor Who series, Security Archives, etc.. 600 acres of office space were built up under Storey’s Gate prior to WWII, protected by seventy feet of concrete, just in case they were needed during air raids. Up until recently, the Crown Jewels were kept in a bunker beneath the Tower and the London Silver Vaults are below the ground of Chancery Lane. A journalist from the New Statesman, Duncan Campell, found his own tunnel portal on a traffic island on Bethnal Green Road, descended 100 feet with his bicycle and proceeded to ride under the ground. He passed through the tunnel beneath St. Martin-le-Grand and then to Holborn via Fleet Street, noticing that Whitehall, the Mall, Leicester Square, Waterloo and Lord’s Cricket Ground were all connected by a system of tennels. Cardinal Wolsley’s Wine Cellar lies underneath the Mnistry of Defense and can still be seen by certain historical groups today.

 

After reading two books about London, I certainly learned a lot. But here’s the most important thing that I learned: There is a lot more going on underneath our feet than we can ever imagine or begin to comprehend.

Think about it…