Time Walk
Through the Dark Beneath Waterloo
This tunnel once carried funeral trains to the Necropolis Railway; now it carries spray paint. Walking it today means passing wall after wall of changing, legally painted murals, with artists at work as visitors pass.
Underneath the colour sits older infrastructure: a Victorian cab incline, a vanished church, and a railway station built for the dead. That buried history is where the street's name begins.
Name Origin
From York Street to Leake Street
The street was formerly called York Street. Its current name is said to honour John Leake, who founded a local hospital in 1767, though this attribution comes from a single source and is not stated with certainty.
Records into the 1850s still referred to the road as York Street even while noting it was "now Leake Street," suggesting the change happened sometime after the mid-nineteenth century.
History
A Church, a Cab Incline, and a Railway for the Dead
All Saints' Church rose in York Street in 1844–6, designed by William Rogers. By 1853 cabs entering Waterloo Station used an incline rising from the street. The following year, in March 1854, the London Necropolis Company bought a plot between Westminster Bridge Road and York Street for a new railway terminus. The station, designed by architect William Tite and engineer William Cubitt, was approved that June and completed by October 1854.
In 1898 a hydraulic lift was installed in the street to hoist Waterloo and City Line carriages up for repair. All Saints' Church closed by Act of Parliament on All Saints' Day 1899, its parish reunited with St John's. The Necropolis station itself moved out to Westminster Bridge Road in 1902, with two platforms and a turntable.
The London Necropolis Railway, built to carry the dead from Waterloo to the cemetery at Brookwood, had its first terminus off this street before moving out in 1902.
Culture
The Tunnel That Became a Canvas
Street art has shaped the tunnel ever since. Darren Cullen, working as SER, founded Graffiti Kings as a movement in 1999 and turned it into an organised business based in Leake Street by 2007; he went on to paint stage sets for the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. In August 2009 the collective Knit the City installed "Web of Woe," a 13-foot knitted spider web with spider and victims, in the street — one of the earliest recorded works of graffiti knitting and crochet.
In 2012, photographer Marc Vallée produced the zine "Writers," documenting the artists who work in the tolerated tunnel. The tunnels off the street have also hosted a Metropolis-inspired exhibition of art and live performance directed by Kevin Spacey.
People
A Robber's End, a Priest's Reunion
Buster Edwards, born Ronald Christopher Edwards in 1931, took part in the 1962 theft of £62,000 from the BOAC headquarters at Heathrow and, the following year, in the Great Train Robbery of 8 August 1963, which netted the gang £2,600,000. He was arrested after negotiating his return from Mexico in 1966 and jailed for 15 years; released early in 1975, he ran a flower stall outside Waterloo station. On 28 November 1994 his body was found hanging from a steel girder in a lock-up garage in Leake Street.
Frederick Lee, born in 1832, served as vicar of All Saints' in York Street. He had been ordained priest in 1856 by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and the following year co-founded the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom. In 1874, with John Thomas Seccombe and Thomas Wimberley Mossman, he founded the Order of Corporate Reunion. Shortly before his death in 1902, on 11 December 1901, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Recent Times
Coffee, Board Games, and a City of Her Own
The Waterloo Draughts café opened in 2018 beneath a railway arch on Leake Street. In 2023, Leake Street Gallery hosted "Her City," curated by Mark Craig and Valeri Larko, running from 20 March to 30 April.
On the Map
Leake Street Then & Now
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called Leake Street?
The street was formerly called York Street. One source suggests its current name honours John Leake, founder of a local hospital in 1767, though this is not confirmed with certainty.
What is Leake Street known for?
It is known as a legal graffiti tunnel beneath Waterloo Station, home to Banksy's 2008 Cans Festival, and the site where Great Train Robber Buster Edwards was found dead in 1994.
What was the London Necropolis Railway's connection to Leake Street?
The London Necropolis Company bought land off the street, then called York Street, in 1854 and built its first funeral railway terminus there, designed by William Tite and William Cubitt, before moving the station to Westminster Bridge Road in 1902.