When it first opened in 1907, the section of the Underground running between Charing Cross and Golders Green had one extra stop that turned out not to be needed.
South Kentish Town Tube station was to be called Castle Road, with the switch coming so late in the day that the green tiles outside the station still bore the original name and had to be painted over.
It opened on June 22, 1907 as part of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, but closed just 17 years later because there weren’t enough passengers alighting on that stretch of Kentish Town Road.
The end came in 1924 with a strike at Lots Road power station which plunged the London Underground into darkness. When power was restored nine days later, South Kentish Town simply did not reopen.
This inspired a short story by Highgate poet and railway fan John Betjeman about a lost passenger who got off at the station on June 5, 1924 and became trapped.
It was supposedly based on a true incident when a train driver stopped at the abandoned platform by mistake and opened the doors.
Like many Tube stations it was used to shelter Londoners from the Blitz during the Second World War.
London Underground later used the station for storage, and in recent years it has housed a motorcycle shop and a yoga studio.
In 2011, with the growing popularity of Camden Town and its markets forcing the Tube station to be one way at weekends, a local resident asked Transport for London if they could reopen the disused South Kentish Town.
They replied that “it would be prohibitively expensive to reinstate the station to modern day standards” adding: “The station isn’t well located in terms of a larger catchment area.
“The majority of those who would be in the catchment area are also within a 10-15 minute walk of Camden Town, Kentish Town or Chalk Farm stations.”
Since 2016, the atmospheric tunnels and platforms have housed an immersive escape room Mission: Breakout.
The three rooms are themed around its wartime heritage as a shelter (housing spies); the myth of the abandoned passenger; and a futuristic sci-fi thriller set in 2099.
Players have 60 minutes to use their problem solving skills to break out of the abandoned Tube station – unlike that passenger from more than 100 years ago who is quite possibly still there.
