Clapham South Shelter Tour

The ‘Subterranean Shelter’ tour featured the history of the Clapham South shelter, from its opening in 1942 to the present day.

Access to the shelter was via this cylindrical pillbox (known locally as ‘The Drum’), positioned discreetly beneath a modern apartment complex. The desire to construct it was due to the Government becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of the population in London, following numerous bombings during the Blitz, with Anderson and Morrison shelters being considered too flimsy to withstand high-explosive bombs. Some Tube stations were already being used for shelter, when in 1940, the Government and London Transport started the excavation of additional deep-level tunnels as shelters from the bombs. The plan was that these could be joined up to provide a new express Tube parallel to the Northern line once the war was over, but ultimately, this plan never came to fruition.

On the 21st October 1942, Clapham South and Clapham North deep shelters were fitted out and made available to the public. From planning to opening took less than two years - most impressive, considering that they were dug by hand. The shelters were divided into two decks that could accommodate eight thousand people in bunks. Access was primarily by stairs, rather than lifts, as studies showed that eight thousand people per hour could negotiate stairs, whereas lifts could only carry one thousand in the same period. The design incorporated shafts of reinforced concrete with steel reinforced pillboxes (the Drums), designed to prevent flooding from any shattered drains above. Each shelter consisted of a pair of parallel tunnels 16 ft 6 inches (5·03 m) in diameter, and 1,200 ft (366 m) in length. The tunnels were slightly curved, with ancillary tunnels linking them to lift shafts. Air entered the shelter through the entrances, and flowed down the spiral staircases along the connecting tunnels into the shelter area. Stale air was sucked out of the shelter through metal pipes in the roof and under the floor.

Canteens were provided with cakes and sandwiches, which were prepared by London Transport, and delivered on trains called ‘refreshment specials’. The deep-level shelters proved invaluable when the Capital became the target of the V1 and V2 rocket-propelled flying bombs during 1943.

After the war, Clapham South shelter was used for billeting troops, as hotel accommodation for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and for visitors to the funeral for King George VI in 1952, and subsequent Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. By far the most historically-significant post-war use of the deep shelter at Clapham South was the temporary home for the very first immigrants from the Caribbean, who arrived on the ship MV Empire Windrush. En route from Australia, the ship called at Kingston, Jamaica in May 1948. An advertisement had previously been placed in Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner, offering transport to Britain, for a fare of £28·10s (around £1,020 by 2024), for anyone who wanted to come and work here. Many of the 492 who arrived in June 1948 already had somewhere to go and live, but those who didn’t were bussed from Tilbury to Clapham, and housed in the deep shelters at Clapham South. Many found jobs in the new National Health Service; some worked in factories and mills locally, but by far the largest employer was London Transport.

Once at the bottom of the spiral staircase, a sign showing the various individual shelters within the Clapham South complex was to be seen. In the case of Clapham South, these were all named after individuals with a Naval background. Further shelters with names beginning with I - P were in the other direction. This sign is likely to date from the 1950s, rather than wartime.

Each shelter had its own warden, and Clapham South was no exception - ours introduced himself before handing out tickets that would allow us entry for the night. The number on the right of the ticket indicated the bunk where each visitor would spend that night - in my case, I was allocated bunk 305 in the Ley shelter.

The warden then demonstrated the types of bombs that the shelter would protect against, including the small but deadly Butterfly Bomb. The black and white image shows the devastation caused by the bomb that landed in Balham, causing damage to the Tube line below, as well as rupturing water mains and a sewer, resulting in around seventy people sheltering in the station drowning.

Before we were allowed to use the shelter facilities, we were all required to head to the Medical room for a check-up. (The inset image shows a doctor and nurse performing a medical examination on a young boy. The photograph shows a Belfast sink, the same of which would have occupied the space beneath the tiles.)

Various period medical products, including a shell dressing, were included on the table, while the remains of two long-disused 15 amp electricity sockets remained attached to the tiling rings.

As a way of demonstrating the vast length of the shelter tunnels, the lighting in this one was rigged for each bulkhead fitting to illuminate a short time after the previous one did.

A short slide show then followed. A map depicting the proposed locations of all deep-level shelters was shown. Those proposed at Oval and St Paul’s were not constructed, ultimately.

This wartime image of Clapham South station shows a blast wall that had been constructed at the front of the station (this has long since been demolished), along with the many spoil heaps on Clapham Common, where the material excavated for the shelters was deposited temporarily.

This image shows a mock-up of the proposed bunk bed arrangement for the shelters. Ultimately, this option was not used, owing to the limited size of the top bunks.

This is an image of the Clapham Common shelter. Although the ventilation ducting and adjacent tower were removed, the main drum survives.

This slide provides a plan view of the Clapham South shelter arrangement, with Anson, Beatty, Collingwood and Drake shelters occupying the eastern tunnel (the upper one as seen here), and Evans, Freemantle, Grenville and Hardy occupying the western tunnel.

Further down the tunnel was a posed publicity photograph demonstrating the new shelter, along with a cutting from the Evening News newspaper that talked of the opening of the deep-level shelters, owing to the high death and injury tolls resulting from the flying bomb strikes.

The warden then led us to the Ley shelter, where we would find our bunks. Here, we sat in partial darkness (every fourth light fitting remained illuminated through the night to allow shelter visitors to use the toilet facilities) while listening to the memories of shelterer Margaret Barford (probably not a relation), who was only six years old when she and her family sheltered at Clapham South.

The Warden’s office was at the end of the dormitory tunnel, with his desk containing one telephone to be able to communicate with the wardens of other shelters; the other, to allow communication with London Transport directly.

The other desk carried various other pieces of equipment relating to Air Raid Precautions (ARP).

The next tunnel featured copies of various wartime posters, including these morale-boosting food-themed examples.

These posters warned commuters to avoid planning a lengthy excursion by rail during a wartime August Bank Holiday, encouraged women to take up employment as bus and tram conductors, and the third (‘The Proud City’) was one of a series of six that were commissioned by London Transport in 1944 to celebrate London’s survival of the Blitz. The images on this series of posters were painted by Walter E Spradbery, with this example depicting a view of LT’s power station at Chelsea. It is silhouetted against wartime searchlights, and surrounded by the devastation of the Blitz. Beneath the image is an extract from the writings of artist James McNeill Whistler, who produced many paintings of this area: “..the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouse are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens..”.

We were then shown the area that had been used as the male toilets. With no running water or sewerage facilities, chemical toilets were employed - an example of one is partially visible to the right of the screen. One of the (less glamorous) jobs that the wardens had was to empty these into a hopper that would use a vacuum pump to send the effluent along pipes that connected with the nearest sewers.

The witness marks for the urinals seen in the period photograph are still present on the right-hand wall.

Our next stop was to the canteen, where every item cost tuppence (2d) to assist the staff providing the catering.

The vertical pillars in front of the counter were painted green - this was to denote that people were not to smoke within this area (but of course, could do so everywhere else within the shelter - the ventilation system expelling the worst of the fumes).

A vintage Simplex fuse box remained attached to the wall behind the serving area.

Many of the light fittings within the shelter were these ‘Lacent’ bulkheads, made by Heyes & Co of Wigan.

The ‘Lacent’ name is cast into the front of the bulkhead.

Next, we saw the staircase that would have led back up to Clapham South station, although the passage between the two is now bricked up. Although intended as an emergency staircase, in practice, it was used as a convenient means of passing between the two.

The cast iron tunnel segments in this area were produced by Stanton Ironworks, near Ilkeston in Derbyshire.

This signage greeted people heading down the stairs from the station, to assist them in finding their way around the shelter.

More signage existed in the next shelter tunnel.

This area was themed around the shelter’s first post-war use, when it served as accommodation and a labour exchange for people who had arrived here on the Windrush.

What had been the Evans shelter had become a dining area by the time that troops were billeted here.

Some of the troops wrote their details on the tunnel walls while lying in their bunk beds, meaning that these scrawls are upside-down to anyone reading them ordinarily. Here, someone with the initials H.B., who was billeted here from Foxley Camp 2 in Hereford.

A visit from Svend Toft from Københagen was also recorded - this visit is likely to have dated from the 1951 Festival of Britain.

This photograph shows Freemantle being prepared for its temporary guests in 1951. The floor-level third bunks used during wartime had been disbanded by then.

In more recent years, the shelters were used for everything from archival document storage (this being why many of the bunk beds carry barcode labels) to hydroponics, as part of the “Growing Underground” artificial farming project. Unfortunately, the outgoings for this project proved to be too expensive, and it was discontinued in 2023.

A somewhat older Margaret Barford paid a return visit to the shelter in 2018, and is pictured below carrying the name of the Grenville shelter, where she and her family called home for two years.