And to think people lived down there - May 2017
About to enter Down Street...
Down in the tunnels...
Between tours, Jo and I took a trip to Downstreet, the subject of one of my songs on Wild Orchids. Originally, a London Underground train stop on the Piccadilly Line between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park, it later became one of Churchill's bolt holes, from which war operations were masterminded.
Having entered through a small insignificant doorway from the street, we descended a long staircase into the interior. At the bottom was a labyrinth of rooms and corridors where people worked and slept. Remnants of kitchens and bathrooms could be seen in the dark dank recesses and at one point we had to negotiate our way around a cavernous lift shaft. We passed through the hub of activity where the most important meetings took place. This was a subterranean world of intrigue, where strategies were devised alongside plentiful supplies of wine and caviar served to the privilege few.
At some points, the lights went out altogether to ensure there was no confusion for the passing tube trains. It was a strange feeling, as if we were straddling between the two worlds of past and present, the past hiding its face as the present briefly brushed against it.
Whilst the Downstreet song was a bizarre fantasy of the London underworld, the reality was equally weird, as that place had sought to cloak itself from normal life. If any train stopped to collect or drop off personnel, other passengers would assume it had been momentarily halted by a red signal light in the dark.
Here was a strange necropolis of memories... I'm sure at one point I caught a whiff of rare cigar smoke alongside the distant clink of glasses, before we finally ascended a spiral staircase leading back up towards the light of a bustling Piccadilly lunch hour.
Entering the lift shaft
Spiralling back up to the light...
