Baker Street Tour
The Hidden London tour of Baker Street station (named officially as “Baker Street: The Worldʼs First Underground") occurred on Friday, 22nd September 2023. This was the newest tour to be added to the Hidden London roster at the time, and a good crowd of enthusiasts had turned up to discover the stationʼs history.
After passing along a corridor over the present-day Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, which last saw passenger footfall in 1911, we visited a small disused area at the end of the platforms for those lines. This may have served as staff accommodation at some point, and although this area was rather damp and musty, some tiling still survived on a wall in an area used as a toilet.
The marks left by a staircase that was also removed in 1911 were still extant on the walls above.
Evidence of the 1911 refurbishment could be found outside this area, with a new bridge, bearing the Metropolitan Railway initials, and its year of construction, serving as a replacement for the original one. Two small windows that looked onto the tracks from the bridge are now filled in.
The four platforms that today serve Metropolitan line trains were originally part of a separate station, Baker Street East, but were amalgamated into the main Baker Street station as part of the 1911 work. A sign advertising Chiltern Court, built above the station by the Metropolitan Railway, remains visible in this area. Chiltern Court was due to open in the mid-1910s, but the arrival of the First World War delayed its construction until the late 1920s, with the eventual design being a product of Charles Walter Clark - the Metʼs in-house architect at the time. Originally, Chiltern Court was planned as a hotel, but when building recommenced, a change in decision saw it become apartments for many luminaries of the day instead.
This hidden area is known amongst staff as ʽThe Cathedralʾ, owing to the vast space that it occupies beneath the Metropolitan platforms. The area dates from the Bakerloo lineʼs opening in 1906, and allowed interchange between the two lines. It became obsolete in 1914, when escalators leading to the Bakerloo platforms opened. Today, it serves as a useful way of running cabling around the station, out of sight of customers.
Hidden behind the usual tell-tale innocuous-looking grille leading off from the public area is the passageway to the former Bakerloo lift area. The lifts (and therefore, this passageway) remained in use until the 24th November 1940, but returned to use on the 8th June 1946, for that single day, to improve capacity during Victory Parade celebrations. Much of the 1906 tiling remains in place, and is in good condition, considering its age and the years of abandonment. A Holophane Wallpackette II bulkhead light is affixed to one of the decorative cerulean tiling rings.
A short passageway leading in to the shaft housing the emergency stairs accommodated two information panels, with the right-hand one showing an early poster map for the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway. Below that is an excerpt of the original station plan.
This close-up of the plan depicts a sharply-curved passageway to the left of the stair shaft. Unfortunately, this area was unavailable during the tour, owing to flooding caused by heavy rain earlier in the week; however, it does feature on the Hidden London Hangout video of the station, which can be viewed by clicking here. As can be seen, the elegant tiling not only continues in this section, but also uses special half tiles to follow the contour of the curve. Owing to road width constraints above, the northbound platform is at a higher level than the southbound is.
The other information panel shows photographs of the original Leslie Green station building, both inside and out. Sadly, this was demolished in the 1960s, and no traces of its existence remain at street level.
The original spiral emergency staircase also no longer exists; a more functional steel flight of stairs has replaced it.
When this passageway was in use, a wall existed at this point, as part of the one-way system around the lift circulating areas that was a common feature in Leslie Green stations. Again, as this area does not form part of the modern-day customer route, the partition was removed.
The tour continued to parts of the station that are located adjacent the Metropolitan line platforms. These areas have never been used by the general public, and serve as staff accommodation only.
The covered section leads out into an open area with the rear of Chiltern Court as the backdrop. Glass bricks in the roof of this Bakerloo escalator shaft allow natural daylight to enter the subterranean system.
Backtracking into the covered section saw us arrive in a small landing area with five narrow doorways positioned beneath the escalator shaft. These supported targets that the Undergroundʼs Rifle Club used for pistol practice. The main rifle range was located behind another door out of view, but the club was disbanded in the 1990s, and the area is used by the Revenue Inspection team today.
