LONDON — There’s a simple, locked door at Chancery Lane station on the London Underground.
Behind it is a wide staircase that leads to a nearly kilometer-long labyrinth of tunnels built in the 1940s, which was first intended to serve as a shelter during World War II and was later used for espionagethe storage of 400 tons of government documents and telecommunications services.
Welcome to the Kingsway Exchange tunnels, located approximately 30 meters below street level in central London. A new chapter could soon begin: Angus Murray, the owner of the complex, who bought the tunnels last summer, and the earchitecture studio WilkinsonEyre want to turn the tunnels into a tourist destination.
Murray’s London Tunnels plans to invest 220 million pounds (about $275 million) in restoring and preserving the tunnels, as well as adding technology for art installations and other attractions. Murray hopes to open the complex in 2027.
For now, entering the tunnels requires riding a small elevator hidden behind a side door in an alley in central London. (Visitors to the attraction would use a different, larger entrance, Murray said.)
When the elevator doors open, you enter a World War II-era tunnel, one of 10 civilian shelters proposed by the British Government when it began the Blitz, the eight-month bombing of London by the Germans that began in September 1940. The tunnels were never used as shelters. When they were completed in 1942, the Blitz was over.
During the Cold War, the British Government instructed its telephone department, which later became British Telecom, to establish a secret communications system in the tunnels that could survive a nuclear attack. Some of the telephone exchange equipment in the tunnels still survives today, although it has not been used since at least the 1980s.
Some parts of the tunnels are lined with false walls and doors with nothing behind them. There is also a bar where postal workers could drink, and Murray said he hoped to make it the deepest underground bar in London.
“I have seen thousands of underground spaces, from the mundane to the spectacular,” said Martin Dixon of Subterranea Britannica, a charity that preserves underground spaces. The Kingsway Exchange, he said, is particularly interesting. “He played his part in World War II and was willing to play his part in the Cold War.”
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