Elizabeth line, London, UK
Adding a new layer to London’s historic public transport network
Tunnelling a new underground railway beneath central London was a task decades in the making, for which Arup played a key role from the outset.
While our multi-disciplinary team developed designs for tunnels and stations, we assessed their implications on the city’s heritage. We helped manage the route-wide archaeological programme, one of the most extensive ever undertaken in the UK, and a scheme to monitor and mitigate impacts on listed buildings above ground.
We led a project to completely renovate 87 Moorgate and 8 Moorfields, two Grade II listed Georgian townhouses located next to a new vent shaft for Liverpool Street station. A 40m-deep excavation left the houses in need of extensive propping, with temporary steelwork passing through all floors, walls, ceilings, roofs and windows.
Our work involved stitching together brick walls, reconstructing dismantled staircases and patching hundreds of holes in studs, joists and lath-and-plaster walls – so while the latest engineering technology was employed underground, a humble piece of London’s past was painstakingly conserved on the surface.
