Aldwych Station: The Tube Station London Forgot

Beneath the streets of central London sits a station that has been closed longer than it was ever meaningfully open. Aldwych, originally called Strand, was born of a corporate merger that rendered it a dead-end spur before its first train ever ran. It failed commercially from its opening day in 1907, served as a wartime vault for the Elgin Marbles and a Blitz shelter for thousands, survived three proposed closures, and was finally killed in 1994 by the cost of replacing its original lifts. It has since become more famous as a film set and tourist attraction than it ever was as a functioning station. The tunnel that could have connected it to the Jubilee line stopped one hundred metres short.