Entrance to Kingsway underground cold-war telephone exchange (London)

 military, Cold War 1947-1991, invisible

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The Kingsway telephone exchange started life as one of eight deep tunnel shelters (built underneath Northern Line and Central Line tube stations in London during WWII. Kingsway is located underneath Chancery Lane tube station.

The wartime shelter consisted of the two long parallel tunnels which run underneath High Holborn. There was a plan that the tunnels could be used after the war as part of a new underground railway line, but this never happened.

The site was taken over by the GPO in 1949. It was extended, by building the four short, large-diameter tubes in the southern sector, to house the secret defence and international telephone exchange. Construction started in 1951 and the exchange entered service in October 1954.

In 1956 it also became the London terminal for the first Transatlantic telephone cable, TAT1. This involved a complicated arrangement of equipment at three sites, with several hundred copper `pairs' linking them: Kingsway itself, the International exchange in Wood Street and the Continental exchange in the Faraday building.

The exchange has been declining in importance over many years, and in 1996 the site was offered for sale by BT. Only the Main Distribution Frame (MDF) was still in service, linking a few circuits between other sites.

The government built a bunker of some sort in the two easternmost of the four main tunnels in the southern sector, possibly in the early 1980s. This too has now been decommissioned, and Sub Brit members were able to look around inside what's left of the facility during their visit on 13th July 1996. The heart of the bunker appeared to be a briefing room, with seating facing a screen at one end and a projection booth at the back. (At one time we thought this was the bunker known as Pindar, but most sources say that Pindar is located underneath the MoD building in Whitehall. Maybe Kingsway was a temporary home for Pindar during construction of the Whitehall site.)

British Telecom used another part of these tunnels for the Kingsway Computer Centre (KYCC) between 1986 and 1990. This housed a secure backup for Icarus, (International Circuit Allocation Record Update System) located in central London.


It has been reported by Stuart McDonald that the entrance in Tooks Court is being demolished. He says "arriving there on Sunday 4th November 2001, I found it surrounded with fences and it was in the process of being knocked down! Walking down Furnival Street off the main road, the ventilation shaft on your right hand side (with the crane over the main door) is still there.

Walking further down to where I assumed the entrance to be, I found the demolition team had already started knocking it down. As you looked to your right into Took's Court (to which access is still allowed), the immediate area around the street level structure was fenced off and there was scaffolding all around it, as well as a corrugated fence to stop unwanted visitors. A small digger was sitting on the roof. Demolition has started from the Furnival Street end. Looking through gateway there, you can see where the entrance has been collapsed to allow the digger access to the roof. Looking at the structure, you can see they have not had it easy trying to knock it down. The top left hand corner as you look at it, must be at least a metre thick all round with a layer of bricks over it."

There is also a goods entrance in Furnival Street, it is unclear if this has also been demolished.