“It was a top-secret, subterranean world, which, on security advice, Churchill was obliged to inhabit. In 1940 passers-by on the street above had no idea of its VIP occupant.”

By Ronan Thomas

WINSTON Churchill called it “the burrow.” Hidden 72 feet (22m) beneath the well-heeled streets of London’s Mayfair district — unknown to most residents — is a spellbinding site of British history.

The UK’s wartime leader was a frequent visitor to its underground facilities at the height of the Blitz (1940-1941). It’s a place which has entranced tourist groups exploring its secrets since 2016. Sadly, the last tours took place this month.

Churchill’s burrow (or “barn” as he also sometimes called it) was the disused Down Street Underground Station, just off Piccadilly. Opened by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway in 1907, on the new Piccadilly Line, it had a short working life and closed in 1932. It was reclaimed as emergency government offices in 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War (1939-1945). What’s more, Down Street Station sheltered Prime Minister Churchill on eight occasions — from October to December 1940 — as German bombs fell across London. It was a top-secret, subterranean world, which, on security advice, Churchill was obliged to inhabit. In 1940 passers-by on the street above had no idea of its VIP occupant.

Down Street Station was designed by renowned Edwardian architect Leslie Green (1875-1908). It was built to Green’s signature Art Nouveau designs – attractive ox blood glazed tile facades and half-moon windows – incorporated into 50 stations across London’s underground rail network, known informally as “The Tube.”

But from the start Down Street was blighted. It was awkwardly sited, in a side street off Piccadilly rather than facing it, so it was easy to miss. It was also not popular among local residents, who complained it lowered the tone of their affluent neighbourhood. Passenger traffic to the station was never high and after 1918 the station closed on Sundays. By the early 1930s, Down Street had was a money loser. After escalators were installed in the nearby, more popular, Dover Street (now Green Park Station) and Hyde Park Stations, Down Street was finally closed to passengers in 1932. The platforms and Otis passenger lifts were removed, the vacant space for the latter used as a ventilator shaft. The station operated a single train siding, otherwise hibernating for the rest of the 1930s.

Mayfair bunker

As war loomed in 1939, Down Street was repurposed as emergency government offices for the Railway Executive Committee (REC). The 11-member REC – formed in 1938 and headed by Gerald Cole Deacon (Secretary) – was responsible for coordinating all strategic movements by rail across Britain.

Down Street Station became a vital secret communications hub with 40 members of staff, the pulsing nerve centre of British rail operations. It had a critical role keeping Britain’s railways running smoothly. From its underground offices, senior civil servants deployed the nation’s four major private rail companies in military and essential freight rail movement.

The station’s refit was completed within months by Robert McAlpine Ltd and by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), a contractor highly experienced in fitting out railway carriages and buildings. The former station entrance was reinforced with a heavy steel door with brick surrounding. An armed guard, behind a steel blast door, watched the entrance through an observation slit. A wall mounted observation periscope monitored those entering and exiting. A lift for two people was installed next to the Edwardian spiral staircase leading 80 steps down to the passenger corridors.

The interior was repainted yellow with handwritten directions on the wall tiling. Gas proof doors were fitted, opening out into a typing pool room with eight secretaries. The first ventilation passage was sectioned off into an executive committee room, meeting rooms and offices. Staff lavatories, using a sewage extraction system, wash basins and bathrooms were added. Lower down, the station’s platform faces were bricked up and converted into a 50-line telephone exchange (connected to the main railway companies), operations room, mail room, separate dormitories for men and women, a kitchen (well-provisioned from railway hotels) with a large extractor fan (serving 27,000 meals per year). A wallpapered executive dining room (mess) seated eight. Basic air conditioning and filtration operated but the atmosphere became predictably close and pungent. It was a bunker-like environment.

For security reasons the staff worked underground, 12 hours a day, staying for up to two weeks at a time. They were permitted brief periods of relaxation in a nearby apartment block at 23 Down Street. Senior staff left unseen, catching tube trains specially halted in the tunnels. Sleeping at Down Street was not easy. The meeting rooms and staff dormitories directly adjoined the Piccadilly Line. Then, as now, trains passed, inches away, noisily and continuously. Staff members reputedly resorted to taking sedative and Benzedrine amphetamine pills to snatch rest and manage their hectic underground workload.

The PM arrives

During 1940-1945 Churchill ran the war from No 10 Downing Street, from the underground Cabinet War Rooms (CWR) at Storey’s Gate and from the No. 10 Annexe in the New Public Offices (today’s Treasury). But in October 1940, the war came dramatically closer to the heart of British government. Air raids damaged both Whitehall and 10 Downing Street. As repairs took place and the Cabinet War Rooms were reinforced, Churchill was advised to use an additional, bomb-proof, location. Down Street Station and its underground facilities fitted the bill nicely.

A key witness to Churchill’s subsequent visits to Down Street was his talented Private Secretary John ‘Jock’ Colville. Aged 25, he acted as the Prime Minister’s right arm at key moments during the war. In his diaries he described Down Street as “the safest place” then available in London for the Prime Minister. He was later trusted by Churchill to sign off additional building modifications within Down Street – a contingency bunker built along another passage for Churchill’s future use — including enhanced communications links. These were built in 1941 in just six weeks, at the cost of £7,000, yet never used.

Wartime records and Colville’s diaries suggest that the Prime Minister stayed overnight at Down Street eight times, between 23 October and 20 December 1940. He reportedly slept on a camp bed in Gerald Cole Deacon’s REC office. The discomfort was short lived. Besides, Churchill was no stranger to seeking refuge underground. In 1899, during his escape from a prison camp during the Boer War, he had been hidden for several nights 200 feet down in a South African coal mine (at Witbank Colliery).

From October to December 1940 Churchill held a number of meetings at Down Street with senior War Cabinet, military and political colleagues. Colville recorded that Churchill also enjoyed several excellent dinners at Down Street, accompanied by 1865 brandy, Perrier Jouet champagne, caviar, a selection of fine cheeses and cigars.

On 30 October 1940, Churchill dined at Down Street in the executive dining room with General Lord Ismay, General Crossman (commanding anti-aircraft defence in London) and War Cabinet colleague Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin. Colville wrote of a convivial, well-oiled, occasion after which Churchill and Bevin emerged from the lift into the street. They were confronted by a policeman, who upbraided them about showing lights on their car parked in nearby Down Street Mews.

“A policeman tried to arrest the PM for having too bright side lights and was finally dismissed with a loud ‘Go to Hell, man,’” recalled Colville.

When Churchill finally left Down Street, on 21 December 1940, he donated £10 to the REC Christmas fund.

After the war, the REC remained operational in Down Street until 1947, before railway nationalisation by Clement Atlee’s new Labour government in 1948. In the following decades, the wartime fixtures were removed. Down Street was placed on life support once again. Its platform level offices and corridors were repainted grey and from the 1960s the empty station was used for tube line emergency exercises by London Fire Brigade. The most recent maintenance and lighting installation took place in the 1990s.

Wartime Down Street revealed

Since 2016, London’s Transport Museum, Covent Garden has run walking group tours of Down Steet, part of its Hidden London events programme. The tours ended this autumn. Before then there was time to taste real wartime history. Down Street did not disappoint. It was a fascinating exploration of a hidden aspect of life for VIPs and essential civil servants and workers during the London Blitz. In my case, I had walked past the station’s red tiled entrance over the years and often wondered what remained beneath. Last week, on a Hidden London small group tour, led by knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides, I came face to face with Down Street’s extraordinary history. Assembling outside, we noticed that no trace of the station’s name lettering remains. Yet its heavy entrance steel door and brick surround pointed immediately to its important wartime role.

Entering though two separate reinforced blast doors, we descended 103 steps down the original Edwardian spiral staircase, past the small wartime lift used by Churchill and senior colleagues as they were spirited in and out. The lift was removed after the war. We walked down past the curving tiled walls with their peeling wartime paintwork and faded 1930s direction lettering. From the foot of the staircase, we were literally following in Churchill’s footsteps.

We soon encountered signs of Down Street’s wartime construction, now dismantled. Stencilled arrows pointed to former meeting rooms. Masonry ruts indicated ripped out gas protection doors. We passed through the former typing pool into the main, half lit, ventilation passageway. Original red tiling still adorned the walls, in places painted over or coated with a light layer of grey dust. In 1940 this area accommodated offices, the first being the REC committee room and the office of Gerald Cole Deacon. The outline of the committee room table was still visible on the passage floor, as was the approximate space where Winston Churchill slept overnight. The not-too-distant rumble of Piccadilly line trains echoing in the passageway frequently obliged the guides to raise their voices.

I had expected a dusty atmosphere, but this part of Down Street remains marvellously ventilated, similar to the experience of today’s tube network. Cool air, pushed by passing tube trains, periodically blew along its length. Further on, by the light of torches, we walked past former bathrooms, washbasins and stripped out lavatories. We picked our way gingerly through shallow pools of water. Down Street today is not overly plagued by mice or rats, but diary accounts from 1940 mention a cockroach infestation, accompanying the food served in the kitchens.

We descended to the former platform level, passing the remains of the telephone exchange switchboard, operations and mail rooms. Dusty light and electrical fittings were visible, along with faded circular patches where wartime office clocks once ticked. It became noticeably warmer. Here, the grey-painted corridors narrowed dramatically, just wide enough to permit passage of that British civil service essential – a tea trolley. We shone our torches into yawning empty former dormitory spaces, their inhabitants long departed. It felt like the close confines of a submarine. Trains flashed past, close by, every three to four minutes. It became easier to understand the pressures the wartime staff must have worked under.

We arrived at two former platform level side entrances in between the east and westbound Piccadilly Line, closed off by metal grilles. It was truly extraordinary to see lighted tube trains rumble past on both sides, heading to and from Green Park and Hyde Park Stations, their passengers oblivious to our presence.

Walking back along the half-curved passages constructed in 1939, we next entered the darkened, wall papered executive dining room (mess) which once hosted Churchill and his senior military, government and political colleagues.

During the Blitz, Colville mentioned the convivial atmosphere here on Churchill’s visits. An original button remained expectantly on the wall, still ready to press for service. The guides activated a wall projector. Images of a speaking white coated steward appeared, extolling the menu options available. Nearby was the former kitchen, its large extractor fan removed, a handprint in grease staining the wall paint.

We retraced our steps back, pausing on a walkway to look up through the cavernous, empty main lift shaft. In coming months, a new ventilation fan is set for installation here, to assist air conditioning along the Piccadilly Line. Down Street also remains an emergency exit point and engineering access for the local Piccadilly Tube tunnels. In 2024, Down Street still lives.

Today, 272 stations are operational on London’s Tube network. An additional 40 are now disused. Of these, eight remain accessible to tourists exploring their once busy platforms and silent tunnels. But for its extraordinary wartime history, remarkable preservation and powerful atmosphere Down Street will forever gleam underground, a hidden jewel of Britain’s heritage crown.

Ronan Thomas is a London-based writer on history and international relations. His articles have appeared across print and online in History Today Magazine, The Historian Magazine, BBC News Online, Asia Times Online, The Straits Times, Business Korea, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Bloomberg News, International Herald Tribune, The Korea Times, The Moscow Times, Christian Science Monitor, Der Spiegel, Gazeta Wyborcza, Krakow Post, Polska Zbrojna, Diena, The Globalist, Diplomatic Courier, History News Network (HNN), City of Westminster Online, Weider History, Reach Plc and Wiley Inc. Most recently, his online history news features have been published by Newsquest Media, Reach Plc, MSI Media, National World Plc, Mortons Media, RAF News and Vintage Aviation News. He is a former strategy consultant and political risk analyst for Accenture and Control Risks, with degrees in history and international relations from UCL and Cambridge University.