💡There’s an ambitious plan to open a mile-long series of secret tunnels, and London’s deepest licensed bar

Who doesn’t love the chance to access this city’s warren of abandoned subterranean passageways and secret infrastructure - particularly if there’s a chilled cocktail waiting 40ft below ground, somewhere in the atmospheric half light?

This week saw the unveiling of The London Tunnels, a proposal to turn the historic - but largely mothballed for the last 70 years - Kingsway Exchange deep under Chancery Lane into the capital’s hottest new cultural attraction.

The plans include preserving and celebrating the underground Blitz-era history and restoring artifacts from the early BT telephone exchange, which housed the first Transatlantic cable - AKA the Cold War ‘hotline’ between The White House and the Kremlin, no less.

At one point, these tunnels also featured a tea bar and games room for BT employees, plus a restaurant and bar that was Britain's deepest licensed premises - an idea that would be enthusiastically resurrected as a centerpiece of the new plans.

There’s a suitably glossy website with some great photos to get you excited ahead of a series of consultation events being held over the next couple of weeks.

If Londoner’s love the proposal, it will be up to Camden Council to approve, and we may be sipping subterranean Sazeracs and exploring more of London’s hidden history here by 2027.

MORE TUNNELS TO TRY

• 📨 Trundling along aboard the mini-trains of the former Royal Mail underground delivery service at The Postal Museum is a memorable alternative day out, but did you know there’s also the occasional chance to walk along the tracks to some additional hidden parts of the network?

• 🪖 Churchill’s War Rooms are a subterranean tourist classic, but keep an eye out for the local versions, namely the access points to the ‘deep level shelters’ you can spot at Belsize Park, Camden Town and Goodge St, with room beneath each for over 8,000 civilians and active during the WWII Blitz. There’s also the odd Camden Borough Control nuclear bunker on Highgate Rd, all of which - and masses more - can be explored via the excellent Subterranea Britannica website.

• 🚆 The people at Covent Garden’s iconic London Transport Museum often run tours of ‘hidden’ underground stations and lost relics like the amazing Kingsway Tram Tunnel. They’re currently booking tours of Euston’s Lost Tunnels.

And talking of Euston….

FOOD & DRINK

🚧 While we wait to see if HS2 might have pointlessly flattened half the ‘hood, Euston’s food scene offers unexpected peaks

The future of the spiraling multi-billion-pound UK transport fiasco that is the HS2 railway line dangles in precarious limbo this week.

While we hold our breath as ‘the PM dithers’ over exactly which bits are to get the chop, if he does indeed scrap the Euston terminus, that’s one shockingly huge swathe of Camden that’ll have been carved up for nothing. 😱

Regardless, life still very much goes on in the neighbourhood, including at the smorgasbord of global dining spots…which today’s Camdenist guide to the best places to eat in Euston will surely help you to discover.

Having run one of our popular Secret Feasts events at a handful of the area’s restaurants earlier in the year, this time we’re giving an entire overview of where and what you can eat, from the famous Bengali curries of Drummond St to authentic Xi'an baps and clay pots over on Eversholt St.

Go support these local independent businesses during this time of ridiculous uncertainty over HS2 and you’ll be rewarded by culinary adventures that don’t require even getting on the slowest of train lines to enjoy.

MORE CAMDEN FOOD NEWS

• 🍻 The arrival of a new month means there are a rash of Oktoberfest events to choose from, if you are a fan of drinking huge beers and eating sausages alongside parping oompah bands and lederhosen-clad staff. The Electric Ballroom has five weekly Saturdays of lively events in their cavernous space, kicking off tomorrow.

• 🌭 Meanwhile, daily free-to-enter celebrations roll on all month at Covent Garden beer hall Bierschenke, with a live band and a range of sharing platters, or go posh with a visit to the German Gymnasium, which has a special menu and ABK beer on draft.

• 🥘 Chishuru was Brixton’s popular modern West African restaurant (which critic Jay Rayner raved about), but which closed last year. Luckily South London’s loss is Fitzrovia’s gain, as chef Adejoke Bakare has just opened a very stylish new incarnation of her acclaimed joint on Gt Titchfield St.

• 🍗 Soho has a new Jamaican culinary destination, Nanny Maroon, on the site where the (Jay Rayner-savaged) Block used to be. It’s a kitchen reboot from the same owner, who was also behind a string of now defunct Camden spots including Gilgamesh, Gabeto and Shaka Zulu.

• 🥺 Oh no! Having seeming expanded into a new local food venture every few months of late, the duo behind Hicce in King’s Cross have announced that the Coal Drops Yard original restaurant is sadly to close in December. They cite unspecified wrangling over the lease of their enviable bottle-warehouse-turned-90s-nightclub warehouse space and huge outdoor terrace, so we’ll have to see if someone else has designs on it…

•  🍨 Meanwhile deep fried ice cream specialists T’s Fried Scoop has also announced it’s closed down after a reported fall out with Camden Market. T’s owner Natasha says she’ll instead focus on her cute merch range, but said the closure was ‘heatbreaking’ in this social post.

• Locally-born and ever-expanding veg and vegan juggernaut Mildreds published their latest cookbook Mildreds Easy Vegan yesterday and it’s a stuffed as a baked red pepper with 100+ plant-based recipes, so now there’s really no excuse for not knowing what to cook your vegan guests.

EVENTS

Black History Month Season kicks off in KX

Camden is proudly one of those places where a single month is nowhere near long enough to celebrate the wealth of Black History that brims over in the borough.

Consequently, for the fourth year running, the extended 2023 events diary - which kicks off this weekend - goes on through until nearly Christmas.

First up is an immersive experience at Lower Stable Street Market at Coal Drops Yard, where organisation Black Owned London celebrates culture, community and the entrepreneurial spirit from today until Sunday, bringing BOLO Fest to the heart of King’s Cross.

You can explore what else is in store over the coming weeks on this page on the Love Camden website, too.

CAMDEN DIARY

Full spectrum Heath humanity, and on-trend signs

A new column charting observations from a week of life, work and play in the borough…

SUNDAY: Hampstead Heath is a bona fide wonder 24/7 and 365, and not just as an urban oasis of fields, ponds, ancient woods and sweeping hilltop vistas - but for the effervescent mixture of people and the stories they bring with them. On a brisk 9am beeline over to Kenwood for a day of cerebral stimulation at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival, I chanced upon the hypnotic lure of a kick-drum emanating from the tree cover atop Parliament Hill.

Further investigation revealed that Saturday night was far from over for a collection of 30 or so tired but happy ravers, who - full marks for thoroughness - had erected an impressive gazebo and complete DJ booth, around which the had gathered to keep the al fresco afterhours going strong. Passing joggers, dog-walkers and young families nodded with an acceptance verging on a yes-the-Heath-is-for-all camaraderie as the punchy early morning basslines dropped.

Meanwhile, up at Kenwood, crowds were also gathering under canvas with philosophical intent (much like the best post-club after parties, in fact). Still, the Heath’s spirit of acceptance - of disagreeing agreeably, to coin a phrase - was again on full display, and commended by those visiting from the hyper-polarised USA. Locally-based politics podcast celeb and keen daily Lido swimmer, Alastair Campbell, revealed how he often mistakes Boris Jonson’s brother breaststroking past him in the mornings for the former PM. When asked what he’d do were it actually Boris, the speculation ran from stealing his clothes to putting his head on a spike. So if one (not wholly inconceivable) day you happen upon a naked disgraced former Prime Minister dashing for cover across Parliament Hill Fields, it’s likely those around you will raise a slight eyebrow, and accept it as yet another example of how lucky we are to have the Heath - and its full spectrum of characters - here on our doorsteps.

WEDNESDAY: Picking up the weekly bag of goodness that is Vegbox at The Grafton pub, we had cause to ponder their new signage. There’s a visible trend right now for local boozers replace the more traditional fancy fonts and ye olde flourishes with chunky san serif lettering. It looks quite smart, is very easy to read, but is just a little plain. It’s obviously à la mode, to the extent that hot Kentish Town Rd newcomer The Parakeet made the seemingly inexplicable decision to replace their brand new hand-painted sign (pictured above) with said simple chunky letters before they’d even opened their doors for the first service. We snapped the short-lived gold leaf dimensional one to illustrate a feature previewing the new venture and remembering the pub’s colourful past with these 10 strange facts. If anyone knows the story of the sign change, we can make it number 11 on the list. 🍺 

MUSIC

Musical fusions, immersions and inspirations

•  🎤 Celebrating a 40-year career which began with her family’s pop phenomenon 5 STAR, gaining more than 20 UK chart smash hits, West End shows, staring in BBC’s The Voice and more, catch Deniece Pearson at Pizza Express Holborn Live tonight.

• Tonight is also the final chance to catch internationally acclaimed pianist Yuja Wang play the last of her special series of gigs against a backdrop of David Hockney at the amazing Lightroom at King’s Cross.

• 🎸 Brazilian crossover thrash band Black Pantera - fronted by two guitar-wielding dreads alongside a wrestling-masked drummer - top the wild bill at Dublin Castle on Thursday (4th Oct)

• 🔊 The unique fusion sound of Latin American roots reggae comes to Dingwalls on Thursday too, when long-running Argentinian group Los Cafres play.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

FREE RIDES HERE

MORE GOSSIP & THINGS TO DO

• ➡️ The always jumpin’ Classic Car Boot Sale is back tomorrow and Sunday, and stretching across more space than ever in and around Granary Square, Lewis Cubitt Square and Coal Drops too.

• ➡️ Saturday also sees the spectacle of the Urban Hill Climb races 2023 take over the intimidating incline of Swains Lane up to Highgate Village. They’re expecting over 2,000 spectators and 18 different categories of racers battling their way up London’s toughest road climb.

• ➡️ Camden Town has a new theatre space in the form of The Vanguard. Formerly a historic horse hospital that has variously been an antiques market, the Proud Gallery, a cabaret spot and most recently home to the Peaky Blinders immersive production, it’s now being used for comedy and recent Edinburgh Fringe transfer The Standard Short Long Drop for a month-long run.

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