In The Dark: Underground London (Part 2)

This webinar is part of a series:
Part 1:    • In The Dark: Underground London  
Part 2: this video
Part 3:    • In The Dark: Underground London (Part 3)  
Part 4:    • In The Dark: Underground London (Part 4)  

In 2013 Nick Catford's book Secret Underground London was published by Folly Books. This was Nick's third book for Folly. Secret Underground London is a comprehensive photographic record of a hidden world which lies beneath the capital but which is not generally seen by the public. This webinar includes photos of many of the sites features in Nick's book with a lot more.

Included in this webinar is a miscellany of sites, from the disused tube stations and closed sections of the London underground railway system, many of which were given a new lease of life, to the secret central government and military bunkers - operations rooms and control centres - which protected London against the German bombers during the Second World War.

He will also look at London's Cold War bunkers, never used in anger; and similarly the more modest Royal Observer Corps posts. There are air raid shelters, large and small, public and private; mines and underground quarries, some going back to the 17th century, and tunnels of all sorts: pipe tunnels, horse tunnels, tram tunnels, service tunnels, and the tunnel under the Thames Barrier. Last but not least, and not for the fainthearted, is a collection of photographs showing the capital's creepy Victorian cemetery catacombs.

Nick Catford was granted unprecedented access to many of the sites in order to compile the collection of images you will see in the Webinar.

Agenda
Closed tube stations
Victorian cemetery catacombs
Bunkers big and small, Cold War and WW2
Underground stone quarries
Deep level tube shelters

Presenter
Nick Catford
Born in Hammersmith, West London in March 1952, Nick Catford was educated at Sutton Grammar School in Surrey, 'dropping out' midway through A-levels to take up a career in local radio. From an early age, Nick has taken a keen interest in photography, getting his first camera in 1962. In 1979 he studied A-level photography at Sutton College of Liberal Arts followed by a City & Guilds photography course at Richmond College in 1980.

Nick has always been self employed, working as a photo journalist for many years. Since the mid 1960s, Nick's other passion has been industrial archaeology; first disused railways, then canals and mills before discovering the excitement of underground and military exploration in 1982. He joined Subterranea Britannica, Britain's foremost underground research and exploration society, that year. He was membership secretary for nearly 25 years and became editor of their journal Subterranea in December 2007, a job he still enjoys doing.

Nick's underground exploration has taken him into a wide variety of underground sites, including many disused mines; he reluctantly learnt how to abseil to gain access. Since the end of the Cold War he has turned his interest to nuclear bunkers, both derelict and operational, writing his first book, Cold War Bunkers, in 2010. Having run out of UK bunkers to photograph he turned his attention to the Eastern Bloc in 2001 where he has toured extensively visiting and recording the bunkers of the former Soviet Union.

Nicks love of underground exploration has declined with age and he now spends much of his spare time attending live music gigs and during lockdown in 2020 has started editing many hundred of live music videos he made in the 1990s and uploading them to YouTube. Over 50 two hour plus videos so far. He has also uploaded a short promotional video he made about Sub Brit in 1991.    • Sub Brit promo. Circa 1988 - 1991