Aldwych: a not so abandoned station just below us

Detail of the 1963 London Underground map, showing Aldwych tube station as a branch of the Piccadilly Line.

The Aldwych underground station on the junction between the Strand and Surrey Street has been closed for nearly thirty years. This lonely station, that stands at the place of the former Royal Strand Theatre, was part of a one-station branch of the Piccadilly line that connected to Holborn station.  This short back-and-forth shuttle service to…

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Notes on the Kingsway Tunnel

Kingsway Tunnel today, looking north.

Editors’ note: The Strandlines editors are always scouring for news and research about the Strand area. Below we’re delighted to be sharing an extract from ‘Here’s everything we learned from this map of London’s defunct tram network’, by Jonn Elledge. You can read the entire article on CityMetric. Anyone who has worked, studied around, or…

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Three Poems for Strandlines by Ruth O’Callaghan

Ruth O’Callaghan starred in Strandlines 1.0’s ‘Cabinet of Artists’. She is an acclaimed poet, mentor, reviewer, adjudicator and workshop leader: see ruthocallaghan.wordpress.com for further details of her published poems and poetry-related activities. Her next collection of poems will be published by Shoestring Press in 2020. We are delighted to have three of her poems written…

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Life (and Death) beneath the Virtual Strand

Since its retirement from public service in 1994 Aldwych tube station (née Strand) has been busily pursuing a second career in showbusiness. Scoring a part in The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ video (1996) before going on to star in films like V for Vendetta (2005), Atonement (2007) and Fast and Furious 6 (2013), it’s also broken into…

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Community engagement methodologies workshop

On December 14th 2010 the Strandlines team hosted a community engagement methodologies workshop in the Strand Building of King’s College. We invited participants to bring along objects that reminded them of their local area, home, or place of work. The aim of the final session of the day was to reflect upon the connections between…

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