Greathead shield

This afternoon we went on another of the London Transport Museum's Hidden London tours where you get to see bits of London's transport network not usually open to the public.  Today, it was Moorgate's Metropolitan Maze. One of the most fascinating bits was that we got to see an abandoned, complete, Greathead shield from 1904, the only one left on the London Underground Network.

In 1907 the Great Northern and City Railway got permission to build a 250m tunnelled extension from Moorgate to Lothbury. In the end they built about 15m and ran out of money. Today, the shield that protected the men tunnelling is still there, abandoned, at the end of an in-use line at Moorgate station.