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Old December 22nd 15, 07:48 PM posted to uk.transport.london,misc.transport.urban-transit,uk.railway
Charles Ellson[_2_] Charles Ellson[_2_] is offline
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Default Clapham shelter to be revived

On Tue, 22 Dec 2015 08:08:59 +0000, e27002 aurora
wrote:

On Mon, 21 Dec 2015 22:30:05 -0800 (PST), Offramp
wrote:

London Underground has secured planning permission and listed building consent from Lambeth Council to turn a park-side rotunda building near Clapham South Tube station into a new restaurant or café with exhibition space, bringing the historic Grade II World War Two shelter back to life.

A café or restaurant will be created on the site, offering views over Clapham Common.

Under the Rotunda, 180 steps below ground and under the Northern line tunnels, lie eight deep-level air-raid shelters that were built between 1940 and 1942. The vast tunnels are one of seven deep level networks constructed along the Northern line. It was not until 1944, when the bombing of London intensified with the use of V-1 and V-2 bombs, that the shelter was used for its intended purpose of housing up to 8,000 Londoners during air-raids. It closed after less than a year in May 1945.

TfL has rented out the shelter for secure archive storage in the past. In 1998, English Heritage awarded the shelter Grade II listed status in recognition of its history, noting that it is the only deep-level shelter remaining that retains much of the original signage and is one of the few to retain many of the original bunk beds...


Much better, IMHO to use it for its original purpose. To wit as part
of a fast, limited stop pair quadrupling the TfL Northern Line.

That wasn't the original purpose (note that Wonkypaedia fails to
supply a source) rather than a "maybe" use after the war (see second
sentence in "History" in :-
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/featur...rs/index.html).
The shelters were built near existing tube lines with access and
service links to them (and possibly using earlier survey records) thus
consequentially were parallel to them.