British Museum tube station
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| British Museum | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Location | |
| Place | Holborn |
| Local authority | Camden |
| History | |
| Opened by | Central London Railway |
| Platforms | 2 |
| Key dates | Opened 1900 Closed 1933 |
| Replaced by | Holborn tube station |
British Museum tube station was a station on the London Underground's Central Line, located close to the British Museum. It is now one of a number of closed London Underground stations.
It was opened on 30 July 1900 by the Central London Railway with its entrance located near the junction of High Holborn and New Oxford Street. In December 1906, Holborn station was opened by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway — now the Piccadilly Line — less than a hundred yards away. The lack of a direct interchange was due to intense competition between the two companies, but with the amalgamation of the lines under a single management in 1933 it was decided that it would make more sense to combine the stations.
The possibility of an underground passageway was initially mooted, but the idea suffered from the complexity of tunnelling between the stations, and the long walking distance it would involve (no-one considered moving walkways at the time). Holborn station was, in any case, better situated than British Museum, as it had better tram connections. It was decided to add Central Line platforms to Holborn and close British Museum. The station was duly closed on 24 September 1933, with the new platforms at Holborn opening the following day.
British Museum station was subsequently re-used up to the 1960s as a military administrative office and emergency command post, but it is now wholly disused. It can no longer be accessed from the surface and the surface building was demolished in 1989. The platforms have now been removed, thus lowering the entire tunnel floor to track level. This portion of the eastbound tunnel is now used by engineers to store sleepers and other parts of track, which can be seen from passing trains.
[edit] Trivia
The station was mentioned in the 1972 horror film "Death Line", but contrary to popular belief, it is not the station portrayed in the film as being the home of a community of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers. The cannibals venture out at night to snatch travellers from the platforms of operating stations and take them back to their gruesome "pantry" at an incomplete station. Donald Pleasence stars as the investigating police inspector, and when finally cornered, one of the cannibals screams a corrupted form of "Mind the doors," obviously having picked it up parrot-fashion from the guards on the Underground trains. The station in question is named simply "Museum" and is clearly stated as being "between" Holborn and British Museum stations in a conversation between Pleasance and Clive Swift, and is supposedly part of a completely separate line that was not completed due to the company building it going bankrupt. Signs in the abandoned station also only state "Museum," as the name.
It did feature in the Bulldog Drummond spin-off film Bulldog Jack (not a Sherlock Holmes film, as some sources claim), as the location reached by a secret tunnel leading from the inside of a sarcophagus in the British Museum. The villain (Ralph Richardson) was finally cornered and forced into a sword duel on the disused platforms, which were a studio set. The station was renamed 'Bloomsbury' in the film.
In Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere, the British Museum tube station features briefly.
The station briefly featured in the computer game Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror.
[edit] External links
- Underground History: Deep Level Lines
- Abandoned Stations - British Museum
- London's Transport Museum Photographic Archive
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