Sound of the underground: abandoned since 1934, Brompton Road tube station is to be transformed into luxury flats after £53 million sale

Luckily for the potential new residents of London's Brompton Road tube station the last train departed sometime in 1934... and we're assuming it has nothing to do with signalling problems.

Since then the abandoned London Underground stop has been used as a World War II command centre - rumour has it that Hitler's right-hand man Rudolf Hess was interrogated there - and more recently as a base for the London University Air Squadron and Royal Naval Unit.

But times, as Bob Dylan famously sang, are a-changing and in a bid to cut costs the Ministry of Defence has been selling off its surplus assets, which just happen to include a number of disused tube stations.

Brompton Road station is likely one of their more salubrious offerings: nestled in a quiet enclave somewhere between the Brompton Oratory and Brompton Square the building has now been sold to an anonymous buyer for £53 million.

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Luxury property developer Michael Spink is hoping to turn the station into luxury flats and told the MailOnline that he expected work on the development to take four or five years.

The Piccadilly Line station originally opened in 1906 and, inside, still retains its original brown and green wall tiles, which have become the hallmark of many Underground stations following architect Leslie Green's iconic design.

With too few passengers crossing its threshold the station was deemed financially unviable in 1934, but was taken over by Winston Churchill's war office just a few years later.

Since then the building's underground areas have remained largely unused and it is one of 32 'ghost' stations that lay abandoned on the London Underground network.

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