The Big Smoke

I have a thing for the underground. Not trendy bars, hidden scenes and pop-up restaurants, I leave that to younger colleagues who aren't Dads, but the actual underground, the stuff that happens underneath our feet. I’ve been to a few of these places in London – including buried rivers and deep-level tube shelters – and can now add another to my list.

Kingsway Tram Subway runs the length of Kingsway beneath the road from Holborn to Aldwych and round to Waterloo Bridge. It was opened in 1906 and operated for less then 50 years, closing in 1952, shortly before trams were taken from the London streets. Upon closure, it was used for storage and as the base for the GLC’s flood control, but is still more or less intact, and is, as is so often the case with buried spaces, rarely open to the public.

Thank God, then, for artist Conrad Shawcross, who persuaded Camden Council to allow him to use the space for his latest installation, Chord, a giant mobile underground sewing machine that is open for a month. Anybody can reserve tickets for one of the free regular tours, which is impossibly exciting for nerds such as myself, who enviously eye the perennially padlocked gates that mark the sloping approach to the tunnel as it sits in the middle of the road by Holborn tube.

The exhibition opened this morning, and I was in the first band of gawpers who gathered on the corner of Theobald's Road outside St Martin’s, anxiously awaiting the signal to enter. How many of us, I wondered, are here to see the installation – a sort of giant wool-spinning machine on wooden tracks – and how many just want a nose round a disused tunnel?

It is bizarre how appealing a space becomes when you are no longer allowed inside it. Londoners are itching at the chance to visit some of London’s abandoned tube stations – which are really no different to the real existing stations they use every day. It’s the same all over London. If you want to make Elephant & Castle trendy, just cement over the entrances to the subway. Overnight, a horrible underground warren would acquire extraordinary mystique, and people from miles around would be queuing up for the chance to have a gander.

On Kingsway, the flourescent-jacketed guide unlocks the gate, and we follow the metal rails in the floor down the slope and into the mouth of the tunnel. After a short walk into the gloom, we arrive at the first of Kingsway’s two stations. On the raised island platform are faded London Transport roundels for ‘Union Street’, while noticeboards are covered in ageing adverts – although a quick scan of one flyposted sheet reveals it dates from 2007. Not everything is as it appears down here; the space regularly doubles as a film set (these are for for 'The Escapist'). How much of this graffiti is authentic and how much manufactured by a set designer, I wonder, as I look at a painted scrawl that reads ‘Spectral Empire’. And does it matter?

We follow the tracks into a larger central space where the performance takes place. It consists of ‘two identical rope machines that weave a thick hawser from 324 spools of coloured string… like two huge spiders, they slowly weave their rope behind them as they slowly travel through the space’, as the official guide puts it. Bobbins, in other words.

The machine is impressive in its complexity, but is overwhelmed by the oddness off its location and has not been going long enough to produce a decent amount of rope. Given that there’s only so long you can stare at very slow mechanised knitting, I wander off to the far end of the tunnel to see how far I can get. Fifty yards along, and a metal fence blocks my path; beyond is rubble and rubbish. I’m probably close to the remains of Aldwych, the second of Kingsway’s stations, which was demolished to make way for the Strand Underpass in the 1960s. The tunnel used to emerge underneath Waterloo Bridge, in a space that has since been converted into the Buddha Bar. If you are interested, Measure, the group behind the project, have organised talks and walks with local historians and subway experts.

After 20 minutes of snooping, snapping and staring at Shawcross’s Heath-Robinson contraption, we head back towards the sunlight, the hum of traffic over our heads sounding just momentarily like the rattle of trams along metallic tracks. If you are at all interested in London’s subterranean history – or are tickled by the idea of looking at lots of coloured wool – get down here while you have the chance.

'Chord' is at Kingsway Tram Subway from Oct 8 to Nov 8. Free.