The Hidden London tour of the\u00a0Clapham South Station Shelter was incredibly enlightening. I found a couple of things particularly interesting.
\nFirst, the idea of living in a major metropolitan area during World War II, where the city was being bombed nightly, is such an alien concept to me. The explanations of citizens’ struggles and trials during the War were evident in the fact that the lodgings in the compound, as simple as they were, were desirable enough for people to queue for.
\nSecond, I found it reassuring that public work projects in the UK also go overboard on both time and budget. It’s not something reserved for the US. I know that wasn’t the point of the tour, but it did explain one of my questions: why was it that they didn’t use the shelters for the first Blitz?
\nThat brings me to another part of the tour that was really nice: the tour guide did (in my opinion) a great job with pacing the tour. Each stop felt like it belonged after the prior one, and each one gave some new information, but also brought up new questions. The questions that rose from each explanation tended to be answered in the next.
\nThe use of space was really cool within the building. The building was originally built with the idea that it may become a railway station, so they made them circular (well, visibly semicircular) so that they would be easy to convert. That meant that the bunks weren’t all the same length. The bottom one was (to my best estimate) around four feet long. The top, obviously, was the longest.
\nHowever, the top bunk still wasn’t long enough, which brought me to the next part of what struck me about the tour. There were sections of the tour where I didn’t know if I could stand up straight, and others where I knew I couldn’t. Those weren’t great, but it was well worth it for the experience.
\nAnother part of the tour that struck me was the smoking laxness. I know that modern (American) thoughts about smoking in public aren’t reflective of World War II British sentiments, but wow. They were allowed to smoke everywhere except for the places where they actually made food. That is, a yard away from where they made the food, they were still allowed to smoke.
\nFinally, I really enjoyed how the trains sounded as they passed by overhead. It was like a dull prolonged thunder, which was nice.
\nOverall, the Hidden London tour of the Clapham South Station Shelter was an incredible experience. I’m so grateful that I was given the opportunity to journey up and down the (many) flights of stairs, and around the shelter. I wish we’d been able to wander, even just a little bit, but I fully understand why we were forbidden from doing so. I also wish we’d been able to take the second staircase up (there were two in the same stairwell, like a double helix), but understand that it leads somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Hidden London tour of the\u00a0Clapham South Station Shelter was incredibly enlightening. I found a couple of things particularly interesting. First, the idea of living in a major metropolitan area during World War II, where… <\/p>\n