1) The Kingsway Tram tunnel
The Kingsway, an unlovely London thoroughfare which was built in 1906 by London County Council to link High Holborn to another new thoroughfare dubbed Aldwych at the end of the Strand, smashed its way through one of the capital’s notorious slum districts, including Holywell Street, which for years had been the haunt of men looking for pornographic literature. The complete thoroughfare was three-quarters of a mile long and a hundred feet wide for most of its length.
At the same time the LCC also constructed in the centre of Kingsway a large tunnel running from the bottom of Southampton Row carrying trams from north London to the embankment and beyond. This tunnel, which opened in 1906 and was the only one of its kind in Britain, had stations at Holborn and Aldwych and proved very popular with Londoners.
At first only single-decker trams used the tunnel, but in 1930 it was decided that double-deckers might significantly increase revenue and so the height of the tunnel was increased.
In the April – May 1952 issue of Today ( Photo World) featured a photo showing packed trams at Holborn station on April 6th and crowds waving them off on their way southwards on the last journey through the tunnel. The unnamed journalist, a frequent customer while a child on this particular tram recalled the experience:
The last of the North London trams has rumbled through the Kingsway for the last time , and the rest is silence. Rickety, shatteringly noisy, though they were, it is not hard to feel sentimental about the death of the tramway, with its peculiar smell of leather and varnish, and its air of gentle melancholy as of an old-timer who had known better days. But, once the kings of the road as they were, they have gone —-and only six routes ( all south of the river ) are left to mourn the loss of their clanking colleagues of the dying Iron Road.
But, even more than the departure of the trams themselves, we mourn the delights of the Kingsway tunnel. There was something glorious and improbable about that headlong plunge though the roadway, that swaying cavalcade past the subterranean stations along the link, the darkness and the light, which made such a journey unforgettable when once undertaken. Who, for instance could ever lose his sense of surprise at that sudden emergence from the murk of the tunnel into the sunlit sweep of the Embankment?
Certainly not the present wrier, who spent every available Saturday afternoon between the ages of six and eight shuttling up and down this magnificent, fairylike line, with its powerful suggestion of the transformation scene at the very best Christmas pantomimes.
Now, however, having served London whimsically ever since 1908, the Kingsway subway and its thundering vehicles have passed into the oblivion which waits so ungratefully for all the old—whether they be trams or men, and that is that….
Following its closure in 1952 the tunnel was used for storing unused buses and coaches and in 1964 part of the southern end was adapted as a traffic underpass. More recently, parts of the northern end were used as film locations, just as sections of the now abandoned spur of the Piccadilly line to Aldwych from Holborn have been favourite locations for film and TV productions. Today, Transport for London offer fifty minute guided tours of the northern end of the tunnel for a very reasonable £49 including VAT.
FUN FACT
The 23 November 1954 episode of the hit BBC radio series ‘ The Goon Show ‘, starring Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe was entitled ‘ The Last Tram’. This was a fantasy in which the driver and conductress of the April 6th tram were found to have remained in the Kingsway Tunnel for 2 ½ years in order to ensure that they had manned the last tram through the tunnel.
R. M. Healey