Stairs leading to the Science Museum in Exhibition Road.
The Skylights
View from the subway up to one of the skylights in the southern end of Exhibition Road.
Young and Company of Pimlico did the casts for the skylights that can be seen along the southern end of Exhibition Road. Young’s was based in Eccleston Road and were a noted company especially for the art bronzes it casted, and the bronze sphinxes at Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment are examples of its work.
There are currently five of these skylights at three locations, all very close to each other. The northernmost one was a single unit which and originally formed part of the Cromwell Road exit. When this exit was closed it appears a spare curved end section was utilised to close off the stairwell and this is why that particular skylight differs from the other four.
A strange matter concerning the skylights is that at one time there were only four. Photographs show just one half of the pair right by Thurloe Place, the other, nearest to the road was a pavement light instead.
Below Thurloe Street (originally known as Alfred Place West) there is a strange, fully tiled, hole in the ceiling. I am not sure what it was, it may have been a small skylight or a ventilation shaft. Whichever it was it would have had to rise up in the middle of the roadway. However as old maps do not show anything of the sort these cavities might have been for lights rather.
Cavity for lights perhaps? Like a chandelier of some sort?
How Many Windows?
One of the four remaining windows that open onto the Natural History museum’s gardens.
There were originally ten windows that looked from the subway directly onto the gardens of the Natural History museum. Extensions to the museum over the years has meant that only four of these windows have survived. Nevertheless the 1908 extension to the subway also involved a further window – the 11th. Nowadays it seems strange that a window was put here but for about 15 years it did look out on a small patch of land belonging to the Science Museum.
One of the original recesses in the Natural History Museum’s grounds for the subway’s windows. This is how all the windows at the northern end of the subway once looked.
Additional 12th window/exit by Museum lane, likely to be a service access point of some sort.
There was a smaller additional 12th mystery ‘window’ approximately where Museum Lane is now, a short distance north of the V&A exit. Maps show a short tunnel heading west from here so it may have been a service access point of some sort.
Some of the windows were in fact blank and these are now used for a display on the District Line’s 150th anniversary.
Originally published April 2016 – Updated 2022.
South Kensington Subway #1
South Kensington Subway #2
South Kensington Subway #3