London Banter - View Single Post

Nick Cooper 625 · January 15th 04, 07:13 AM posted to uk.transport.london

(Matt Ashby) wrote in message . com...
At the bottom of the Piccadilly Line escalators at Holborn, you turn
right to reach the platforms. As you enter the tunnel at the bottom of
the escalator, there is a large, heavy-looking, apparently steel door
set into the wall on the left-hand side of the foot tunnel.

Other than having been painted open, it looks like it is in working
order (it even has a small handle).

What was the purpose of this door, and is it still available for that
use today?

Flood-door dating from WW2. These were fitted at various stations
where a bomb breaching adjacent water mains might endager the running
tunnels, or where one line flooded due to a bomb breaching a tunnel
under the Thames could flood into another line. These are still
visible at a lot of stations, such as at the foot of both escalators
linking the Northern Line with the National Rail (formerly Northern
City Line) platforms at Moorgate. They could also be seen in the
end-of-platform tunnels between the Piccadilly and Northern Lines at
Leicester Square, but they were faced and tiled over during
refurbishment work late last year, although the it's still fairly
obvious where they are. If you look at the northern ends of both
Northern & both Bakerloo platforms tunnels at Waterloo, you can also
see the remains of the track-side flood-doors that would have been
closed had any of the under-Thames tunnels been breached.

It's important to appreciate that these were not, "blast-doors," as
they are sometimes erroneously called. A case in point is what
happened when Bank station took a direct hit in January 1941. The
initial Civil Defence report noted:

"At the foot of the escalator to the Central London railway there are
two steel doors for the prevention of floods giving access to each
side of the tube platforms. These doors were open and the main
casualties were those sheltering at the foot of the escalator, who
were blown through the doors against the wall of the tube opposite.
Had these doors been shut, the technical officer of the Transport
Board advises that the blast might have blown in the sides of the tube
tunnels."

I've been doing a lot of new research lately for my site on the
Underground during WW2, and an update should be online soon. The
existing page is at:

http://www.cwgcuser.org.uk/personal/...ra/lu/tuaw.htm