Hidden London - Moorgate Station

4th March 2020

In a previous era when we were able to leave home without the risk of catching the plague, having our shopping examined by the police, or being abused by self-appointed guardians of society on Twitter, I paid a visit to the disused parts of Moorgate Underground station by means of a Hidden London Tour by the London Transport Museum. Was it really only a month ago? For anyone old enough to remember 1975 Moorgate is synonymous with one terrible thing but there's more to the station than that.

Moorgate Station - Metropolitan Line

 Moorgate station in the City of London opened in 1865 as the terminus of the first extension of the Metropolitan Railway, intended to bring the line closer to the financial heart of the city. A year later extra platforms were added for the Metropolitan Widened Lines, a.k.a City Widened Lines, which gave more capacity in peak times. In 1868 these lines were extended to King's Cross and used by the Great Northern, London Chatham & Dover, and Midland Railways for services to that station. The Metropolitan Railway altered their terminal platforms in 1875 when they extended the line to Liverpool Street and Moorgate became a through station.

 

Moorgate Station - Northern Line

 Moving forward 25 years a second Moorgate Station was built when the City & South London Railway (now part of the Northern Line) arrived in 1900. This tube station on the other side of the road also incorporated a fancy 6 storey office building which became the company headquarters. Four lifts took passengers to the platforms deep below the ticket hall. In 1904 the Great Northern & City Railway joined the C&SLR at Moorgate, bringing main line trains through larger than normal tube tunnels from Finsbury Park direct to the city, relieving congestion at King's Cross. This meant there were two separate Moorgate stations (actually both called Moorgate Street at the time) and passengers wishing to change lines had to come up to the surface and cross the road. 

 

Old signage in subway tunnel

 Since this was a pain in the neck the three railway companies built a passenger subway to link the stations. This opened in 1912 and contained ticket offices for the three underground lines and mainline trains running over the City Widened Lines.

These subway tunnels form the first part of the Hidden London tour, (Were you wondering when I'd get to that?) where the guides explained much of the above history in the now very grubby tunnels after descending the spiral staircase - no lifts any more. As always the presentation given was excellent, pitched at the right level for "tube nerds" and "normal" visitors both.

 

Greathead Shield

The next section of the tour took us to Moorgate's "unique selling point" as far as station tours go. The Great Northern & City had always intended to extend it's line to Lothbury, further into the heart of the city and so a Greathead Shield was installed at the southern end of the tunnel ready to excavate the new line southwards. This required supporting money from the Great Northern Railway but they pulled out of the project and the tunnel went no further. The GN&C, heavily reliant on peak hour traffic was bought by the Metropolitan Railway in 1913. The Greathead Shield however was left in place and over 100 years later it's still there. After  being strongly warned against taking photos of the trains - the shield is located just beyond the live platform, ducking through a narrow service tunnel, and waiting until the platform is empty a raised walkway takes us to something you really won't see anywhere else on the network. (Though if you've walked through the pedestrian tunnel between the DLR and Waterloo & City at Bank station you'll have passed through the remains of a Greathead shield left in place after the line was completed and rediscovered when the DLR was built, look for the red metal ring partly embedded in the tunnel walls.)

 

Moorgate "catacombs"

During the Blitz the Metropolitan station at Moorgate was very heavily damaged being a subsurface station with open platforms not a deep tube. (So this is one Hidden London station tour where "used as an air raid shelter" isn't a theme.) Temporary repairs were carried out post-war pending the area's redevelopment. That redevelopment was part of the Barbican and entailed re-aligning the Metropolitan tracks between Barbican station and Moorgate. Between 1962 & 1967 a steel and concrete raft was built over the Metropolitan platforms and Moorgate Underground station actually became an underground station. Three seven storey office blocks were then built above. As part of the Thameslink project the City Widened Lines platforms were closed in 2009. Sometimes humorously referred to as the Moorgate Catacombs these are intended to be re-used as storage sidings for the Hammersmith & City and Circle line trains in 2020. The tour takes us through the working platforms and into the construction site to the end of the Widened Lines platforms where on the day I went we were lucky that the builders had left the lights on, affording a good view down the lines under the Barbican.

 

Metropolitan Railway "Diamond & Bar"

Moorgate station will be joined to Liverpool Street by the platforms of the new Crossrail* station - whenever that eventually opens, adding another chapter to the history and complexity of a station which I hitherto had rarely thought about except in connection with that terrible accident on 28th February 1975 when a train from Drayton Park failed to stop at the terminal platform, hitting the tunnel end wall at about 35mph and resulting in the deaths of 43 people. This was the Underground's worst peacetime accident but was the catalyst for the introduction of the automatic safety system, sometimes called the Moorgate System, that will stop a train entering a station too fast and that has been adopted on railways across the world.

(*Cross/Eliz/Purple/rail/train/Line 😉 )