The ghost stations of the London Underground

The 272 stations on today's map are only part of the story. Under and around them sit stations that closed, one that was half built and never opened, and platforms that still exist behind unmarked doors at stations you use every week. London Transport Museum calls the whole subject Hidden London, and it runs actual tours through some of it.

These are the real ones, checkable against the network you can already explore at dailymetro.live/london/explore or play against at dailymetro.live/london.

1. Aldwych, closed 1994 after outliving its own branch line

Aldwych opened in 1907 as the terminus of a short Piccadilly line branch from Holborn, and it spent most of its life running a single shuttle train to a nearly empty platform. Passenger numbers never justified the cost of replacing its lifts, and it closed for good in 1994. The building and platforms survive largely intact, and film and television productions use them constantly: they have stood in for stations across the network whenever a production needs an empty Tube platform without renting a live one.

2. Down Street, the Piccadilly line stop that became a wartime bunker

Down Street opened in 1907 between Dover Street (now Green Park) and Hyde Park Corner on the Piccadilly line and closed in 1932, done in by its awkward position between two more useful stations in wealthy Mayfair, where few residents used the Underground anyway. Its disused tunnels were fitted out during the Second World War as a shelter for the Railway Executive Committee, and by some accounts hosted Winston Churchill's War Cabinet in the early days of the Blitz before the Cabinet War Rooms were ready. London Transport Museum now runs Hidden London tours through it.

3. British Museum, made redundant by its own replacement

British Museum opened in 1900 on the Central line and closed in 1933, for the plainest possible reason: new Central line platforms opened at Holborn a short walk away, and London Underground simply didn't need both. It is one of the clearest cases on the network of a station being retired not because it failed, but because a better-placed neighbour made it redundant overnight.

4. York Road, a station its own neighbourhood didn't need

York Road opened in 1906 on the Piccadilly line between Caledonian Road and King's Cross St Pancras, in an area of goods yards and warehouses with too few residents to fill it. It closed in 1932 for insufficient ridership, one of several early-1930s closures where the Piccadilly line's original stop spacing turned out to be far too tight for the passenger numbers actually showing up.

5. Brompton Road, demolished for a wider road at Knightsbridge

Brompton Road opened in 1906 on the Piccadilly line and closed in 1934 once a new entrance was built at Knightsbridge station nearby, making the old stop surplus. Most of the building above ground has since been demolished; only a side elevation remains, easy to miss if you don't already know to look for it.

6. North End, the station that was never finished because nobody would need it

North End, planned from 1903 on what is now the Northern line under Hampstead Heath and popularly nicknamed Bull and Bush after a nearby pub, got as far as partially built platforms before the operator abandoned the idea. The surrounding land was protected heath rather than housing, so the passenger numbers that would have justified finishing it never had anywhere to come from. It is the closest thing on the network to a station that failed before it was ever born.

7. Lord's, closed to speed up trains once St John's Wood took over

Lord's opened in 1868 on what became the Metropolitan line, near the cricket ground it was named for, and closed in 1939. By then the nearby St John's Wood station handled the area's traffic well enough that keeping both stops slowed every train through for little benefit, so Lord's was dropped to free up capacity on the line.

8. The Jubilee line still has two platforms hiding at Charing Cross

Charing Cross is not closed. It is a working Bakerloo and Northern interchange used by millions of people a year. But its Jubilee line platforms, opened as a short branch terminus in 1979, went dark in 1999 once the Jubilee line extension rerouted trains south of the river through London Bridge and on to Stratford. The platforms are still there behind locked doors, occasionally lent out for filming, a fully built piece of Tube that a working station carries around without using.