By Jo Best, 16 October 2008 12:19
NEWS
BT is looking for a new buyer for its "secret World War II tunnels".
The mile-long Kingsway Tunnels have a chequered history, starting off life in the early 1940s as air raid shelter designed to hold 8,000 people and later briefly taken over by MI6 for storage.
The tunnels, which run 100 feet underground below Holborn, in London, also played home to 400 tonnes of sensitive documents from the Public Records Office in 1945 and were later transferred to the Post Office and then onto BT in 1984 when the telco was privatised.
BT used the tunnels as trunk exchange, connecting long distance calls before the STD (subscriber trunk dialling) code was introduced. According to the telco, the exchange routed the hotline between the US President and his Russian counterpart in the 1950s.
In the 1980s, the tunnels were the base for BT's data back-up services and also the telco's London Area Group.
Some 25 years after first taking over the tunnels, BT is now hoping to find a new owner for them.
A BT spokesman said the tunnels have been unused for some 15 to 20 years, with the decision to sell them prompted by Griff Rhys Jones.
The spokesman said: "It was that Griff Rhys Jones show where he goes around New York, London, Paris looking at old buildings. Last week he was in New York, yesterday he was in London. They approached us earlier on in the year and said 'Can we have a look around your tunnels?' and we said 'yes, we're trying to sell them'."
The telco reckons a government body or large company might prove a likely buyer. According to the spokesman, no offers on the tunnels have been received yet.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Douglas Colyer
Are these the same tunnels that were used by trams to get from Kingsway to Mount Pleasant? I certainly remember traveling on underground trams in the early 1950's from Kingsway.
2. Douglas Colyer
Are these the same tunnels that were used by trams to get from Kingsway to Mount Pleasant? I certainly remember traveling on underground trams in the early 1950's from Kingsway.
3. anonymous
A better hole to invest in than the Stock Market at the moment....?
4. Chris S
If the Kingsway Tunnels being described are the ones I think they are, then they are actually only a single tunnel. The tunnel is older than the 1940s, originally beng built in the 1900s as a tram underass running from The Embankment beneath the north side of Waterloo Bridge, under Aldwych, and emerging at Holborn. There were also two tram stations in it at Kingway and Holborn. The tunnel was closed to trams in the late 1930s. The southern part of the tunnel was converted to a road underpass from Waterloo Bridge, emerging in Kingsway. The road underpass is still in use, and the tram tracks are still visible at the northern exit.
5. anonymous
Wrong! Those were subsurface, cut-and cover tunnels. These are much deeper bored tunnels.