The bunker at the end of the world - in Essex Kelvedon Hatch is a superb example of absurdist geek life. Not only is the site technically very impressive, it is also completely useless and frequently prompts the question “what on earth were they thinking?”... A tour reinforces this view as the experience now is as enjoyably peculiar as the history behind the place. The …
It's very easy to be critical, even dismissive of these relics and why they exist. Being born in 1957, clearly I will not be able to remember the days that prompted "constructions" such as this. They remain important historical sites and imho should be preserved as such. Hopefully this site and others like it will be preserved for our children and grandchildren to get some perspective on why we are as we are now.
In one way, preservation is guaranteed. As with the German coastal fortifications in France from WWII, they're almost impossible to destroy. So much reinforced concrete was used, that these things just won't blow up. So I guess it's a case of finding a use for them, or making them into interesting museums.
It's interesting just how little effort the government put into civil defence. In the end they just decided that nuclear war would be so terminal, that there was little point in doing too much about it. This is a relatively small country, with a high density of targets.
I was reminded of all this yesterday, as there was a piece on the radio about 'Protect and Survive'. Not a particularly cheerful memento of the Cold War either. I remember watching 'Threads' in the 80s, and there was one shot in Sheffield as well was it called 'The War Game' or something?
I certainly remember having conversations in the 80s, once I was old enough to understand what it meant. Living under a mile from RAF Strike Command, in High Wycombe, surviving a nuclear war wasn't really an issue I had to worry about.
Threads was set in Sheffield. The War Game was set in Kent.
Regarding civil defence, there *was* some preparation in the early 1950s, but the initial enthusiasm had declined by the end of the decade; the last month of my father's National Service were spent on a CD training course that (from his recollection) was mostly about rescuing people from buildings that had collapsed post-attack. The CD Corps itself was wound up by the Wilson government in 1968.
@Nick Gibbons
Civil Defence, as such, continued after 1968; it was still going in the 1970s.
After an extensive training course, my father was given access to a pistol and the key to the local bunker. His qualifications were that he had been an RAF aircrew Observer/Bombing Leader in WWII; and was at the time, the highest ranked (Commissioned volunteer reserve) Senior Local Government Officer in the area.
"The CD Corps itself was wound up by the Wilson government in 1968."
My father joined the Civil Defence. For him it was just a continuation of the civilian factory fire-watching tasks of the 1940s. Unfortunately as he was on shift work he missed a third of the training course. They still gave him a full certificate.
Apart from that I have no memory of the real danger that the Cold War threatened. Certainly none of the "duck and cover" drills of the USA schools. Even the Cuban Crisis hardly registered. Cyprus and Kenya were places that cousins were serving their National Service. Pictures were sent home of them fitting out radio masts with a sten gun balanced on their lap.
A left wing union member took some of us teenagers round a London Soviet Exhibition in the early 1960s. The manned space capsule was just a large steel ball. The circular hatch was locked down by 25mm diameter stud bolts and hex nuts. Nothing like the sleek USA Gemini craft.
During my childhood there were still many remnants of the war: gaps between houses in a street; big "S" signs for shelters in pub cellars; the blackout paint on the station glass roof slowly wearing away; pill boxes by the canal and railway. It never registered on me what the war had been like - my parents rarely talked about it.
Only in recent years have I realised the reality. A good description of the trials and excitement of the Home Front is in the diary of a teenage boy living and working in London. "Boy in the Blitz" the 1940 diary of Colin Perry.
Threads was the one in Sheffield - still some of the most terrifying TV ever made, and available in full on YouTube, as are the Protect and Survive animations. ('Save your family from death by incineration, flying glass and radiation poisoning by whitewashing your windows and hiding under bits of wood and soil from the garden - for at least two weeks.')
The War Game was an earlier documentary, banned from TV but shown regularly at CND meetings. (And, inevitably, on YouTube.)
London would have been hit multiple times, and it's unlikely the Russians didn't know about Kelvedon Hatch. The bunker is hard enough to survive a Hiroshima-level A-Bomb attack, but would have been useless against the multiple megatons of a full Soviet bombing run.
I read recently that planners in the US had targeted Moscow with something like six hundred warheads.
Even Dick Cheney was shocked.
I bought Threads on DVD about 6 months ago, pretty scary stuff and worse when you think we came pretty close it becoming a reality. Has a young Reese Dinsdale who starred in "I.D." another nutty role in another nutty film!
Being a spotty 16 year old thrash metal fan in the late 80's we got a regular dose of being told that the end is coming whether you like it or not, so stop worrying and just get out and party just before you get wiped off the face of the earth!
"I bought Threads on DVD about 6 months ago, pretty scary stuff and worse when you think we came pretty close it becoming a reality. Has a young Reese Dinsdale who starred in "I.D." another nutty role in another nutty film!"
The companion documentary to Threads, `Q.E.D - A Guide To Armageddon` narrated by ludvig Kennedy is also worth a watch. It really drives home the fact that in the U.K every single person would be fucked due to population density, landmass and fallout. There wouldnt be a single drop of water or patch of land uncontaminated. The last 5 minutes, where ludvig sums up the situation any survivor, emerging from their bunker would experience is absolutely harrowing. Very sobering documentary.
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vejorfkdgwU
I remember being shown "A Guide To Armageddon" at school at the age of 12, and I think it is still the single most terrifying experience I have ever had - I hardly slept for three months afterwards, thinking that every plane that passed overhead was an inbound warhead. Truly chilling.
As I got older, I realised how irrational my fears were - and then, more recently, I found out more about incidents such as Able Archer back in 1982 - turns out my fears were not only rational, but that we came far closer to being annihilated on a number of occasions than most of us realise. Now that *is* chilling.
Perhaps I'm being picky - but wouldn't a nearby nuclear blast vapourise or at least blow over that communications mast? So how exactly did the BBC expect to continue broadcasting unless they were going to draw straws about which unlucky producer would be going outside to nail up a half wave whip at the top of any tree that was left standing?
More seriously - I'm assuming the government boffins must have considered this so there must be substantial cable based comms still buried away on the site?
Our sergeant (Oberfeldwebel) used terms like NEF - Nicht existierendes Feindbild / Non existing concept of the enemy for the Warshaw Pact since officially the Bundeswehr was ready to defend against enemies on all borders.
Strangely the targets at the range showed russian soldier or tank silouettes and Force Red(1) always attacked from the east and always was reported to use WP vehicles and in the end the Amis nuked everybody on a line from Hamm to Hannover or Frankfurt to Fulda.
(1) Red = Enemy and Blue = Own pre-dates NATO and WP by more than a century. Urban legend has Napoleon introduce it since some of his Marshals where illiterate
There were a lot of tests done on the survivability of structures like radio masts when exposed to nearby nuclear blasts, and it turned out that big steel framed radio masts actually do pretty well - not much surface area, so the forces are kept fairly low, and most of the blast just passes straight through them. A blast close enough to destroy the bunker would obviously take the mast out, but one a couple of miles away wouldn't necessarily have done so. The most fragile things on the radio masts were the microwave dishes that were used for secure line-of-sight comms between such installations, but they kept spare dishes in storage to replace the ones on the mast after the bangs.
It's long out of print, but if you can find a copy of Peter Laurie's "Beneath The City Streets", he goes into a lot of detail about the secure inter-bunker communications network and its survivability.
Thought about that as well. Reminds me of when I was a "Post Office Telephones" engineer and we had to periodically inspect certain kit in mini bunkers around the area (checking signal and batteries, etc) which were meant to be manned by the Observer Corps in the event of a nuclear attack. They were kitted out with rudimentary survival kits and, rather ominously, a bomb blast indicator. However, I often wondered how they were supposed to get on station from their main headquarters in town, which was a good 25 minutes drive away when the warning time was a mere four minutes (if I remember correctly). Also the feed carrying the signal for the electronics was just a good old bog-standard overhead telephone wire over several spans on the usual wooden poles. Couldn't see that lasting even milliseconds in the event of a bomb being dropped!
I can't remember the movie, but it had Charlton Heston as the pyramid builder and ummmmmm that King and I guy as the pharoh ?????? and the whole thing about this was building the Cheops pyramid and then setting off all the intricate internal locking and sealing mechanisms...
Now the kings wife was a schemer, who wanted to get it all when he died... and
The really scarey bit was the locking and sealing mechanism, which included the kings family and priests, all being seated in a sealed room inside the pyramid, and a HUGE rectangular stone block slide down an internal ramp, breaking off these clay cups, in the walls.
As the clay cups broke, sand came pouring of the chambers behind them, and flowed down the slop and into some channels, that excited into the room where the queen and priests were... effectively and eventually, burying them alive inside it.
The queen was rather non plussed when she discovered that she had in fact inherited the kingdom - his after life one, and that she got to join him in it - for eternity.
And I look at all these concrete bunkers and underground chambers, and I think, "Well - these are all just underground tombs.... - and I hope to die, in the middle of a green grassy field under some nice trees."
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Put Kelvedon Hatch into the GPS not just Kelvedon or you'll end up about 40 miles out of your way at t'other end of the A12 feeling confused...its surprising how many times I was asked for directions to the nuclear bunker that isn't 2 miles or so from colchester... Not so surprising how rude some people got though.
When I first heard the name I thought someone was talking about a new Vauxhall. I've the joys of being a Colchestrian too. One good thing about colchester and environs, if the Russians do invade the road are so bad even a T72 commander would have second thoughts - I'm sure automatics shouldn't change gear via the pothole to roadwheel interface..
Oh dont.. Belt skirts, boob tubes and 7 year olds just shouldn't mix - but they do. Every time I see it in town I shrivel up a little inside.. The worst is when the kid carries off slapper-chic better than mum.. It makes you wince.. Feels like an angelic Saville has crept up and stolen a bit of your soul..
In fact, during a games meet / LAN party in 2000 and 2001 (I believe) my mate rented the whole place out and we had ~30 people + computers in there playing various games.
The best was during the Star Craft tournament when "Nuclear launch detected" was repeatedly broadcast throughout the war room ;)
Check out the Hack Green secret nuclear bunker which is another "ROTOR" station in Cheshire which is well worth the visit if your in the area, we first saw it from the canal where there is yet another fantastic sign right on the canal:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YiBNWc1sk4w/UWcASBbq5kI/AAAAAAAAAss/lcQFuKzdD2M/s1600/DSCF0870.JPG
> At a closed auction, the Parrish family - who had originally sold the land for the base and still farmed the surrounding fields - bought it back.
It would have been amazing to see it in the local estate agent's window.
"For Sale: 2 bed bungalow, needs some renovation, very large wine cellar."
Really atmospheric, slightly comical at times due to the shop-window dummies but there was always this reminder of how terrible it would have been. Almost your first impression is that long corridor with 2x90 degree bends at each end and on the bunker side a Machine gun port - unlikely to be used in defence but to stop unauthorised citizens from swarming the place. A horrific thought and sets the tone for the rest of the excellent tour.
I was wondering about that.
Re Tim Roberts 1. yes... I remember my father staring out the window during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was about 3 1/2 at the time. Its one of the few images of him I could still paint after all these years.
It may look mad now but it happened and was very very real at the time.
Interesting to explore and easy to laugh at the dioramas but the reality behind this building is pretty sobering. Grim is an understatement, Its poorly lit, cold and musty with an undercurrent of rot.
Hard to imagine what it would have been like to be shut in down there as blasts shook the ground and the world died above you.
Not just in Britain ...
On a visit to Washington DC a few years ago, I spotted a car prominently labelled "US Secret Service - Uniformed Division". There is also a turnoff from one of the Baltimore-to-Washington freeways, labelled "National Security Agency - Employees Only".
I used to do re-enactments in the bunker, staying there at night and sleeping in the bunks.
We used to do the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.
It is scary to think that on that day Russian bombers were coming down the north sea and if the secret talks had not succeeded in america the missiles in Norfolk would have been fueled and WW3 would have started.
But that information is not commonly known with the standoff at Cuba being the more widely known incident.
and the place had a delightfully ramshackle feel, seemingly also serving as the foundations of a museum of shop-window mannequins. One of whom, if I remember correctly, was sat in front of a microphone in a radio studio wearing a Spitting Image Maggie Thatcher mask. A thoroughly British day out.
Very little of the original contents of the bunker remained when the bunker was decommissioned. The Parrish family took anything and everything from the period as props to recreate the interior. So don't go looking too closely trying to deduce why HM Govt was using various bits of kit. The only thing you can deduce is that 15 years ago the Parrish family were given various bits of kit.
As a local I can tell you, as expected, you can't build something like that and keep it a secret. Ever since I was a kid I knew about the military base in the woods. The signs on the fence rather gave that away. So those machine gun positions covering the corridor would have been for us!
"It is scary to think that on that day Russian bombers were coming down the north sea and if the secret talks had not succeeded in america the missiles in Norfolk would have been fueled and WW3 would have started."
Russian bombers have always been coming down the North Sea! That was what the QRA force were for. A quick scramble and escort the ruskies back out of our airspace.
To nicely tie in with something else that has happened in these last few days...
I was on HMS Ark Royal in the late 80's, on detachment from the RAF, and was able to stand on the flight deck and watch a Russian Bear bomber go overhead. This was around the north of Scotland on exercise!....Ahhhhh....happy days!
<<< That's for "Channel night"!!
Very shortly after reunification two recently aquired MIG 29 visited the local Bundeswehr base. Quite a few peple, me included, had to fight the urge to take cover and call for the Flak when the "Iwan" came in fast and low with two smoke-free F4F(1) in hot pursuit.
(1) Afterburners on and barely under the Mach. Man what a sound mix...
" Afterburners on and barely under the Mach. Man what a sound mix..."
In the late 1960s an airshow in Wem had a Spitfire do the classic low pass over the crowd - followed by a steep climb to produce that iconic sound. The show commentator then said that the English Electric Ligntning was delayed. So everyone was unprepared as it imitated the Spitfire's low pass and steep climb - with the afterburners on.
It wasn't so much a noise as your very insides being pummelled into jelly.
I was on the deck of the Audacious class Ark Royal in the '70s at Navy Days when an F4K came over and did the climb with after-burners on. Flat metal surfaces and the flight deck reflecting the sound, it was deafening.
I think it was the same visit that we took one of the Drakes Island boat trips, and saw Eagle (the Ark's sister ship) mothballed and anchored just off the Island. There's something strangely disturbing about such a large warship with nothing happening on it, although it was not as bad as watching the follow-on episode to the BBC first series of "Sailor", where they took the Fleet-Master-At-Arms who had served on the Ark for 20 years on-and-off to the graving dock where they were pulling her to pieces. Seeing such a 'hard' man crying was terrible to see.
As posted to the RAF Neatishead thread, on here some weeks ago, I was in RADAR, and thus we could "see" the paints of the bomber coming over. We knew where it was coming from so a quick run up to the flight deck and we could see the shape of it in the sky.
Yes, you could hear it....but getting "eyes" on it was far more exciting....at least to this, then, 19 year old scopie!
< for the payload of the Bear-H!
I'm not convinced that a lot of the vintage IT kit in the bunker actually *comes* from there, I think a lot of it was added when it was turned into a museum. Still, it's well worth a visit. The bit that got me was the three-shift system for the bunk beds. A cushy little number this was not.
Excellent place to visit, very atmospheric, interesting and down right frightening at times. Most frightening was being told on the tour that the defences were mainly to keep the likes of you and me out not marauding Ruskies, it was expected that society would have returned to a more feudal like existence.
After visiting the bunker we went home and watched "Threads", needed a damned good drink after that lot! ;-)
Recently a couple of locals(Harlow) organised a zombie invasion/survival role playing type game based in the bunker -tickets were sold out before I managed to get any -gutted!
In 1986 we had a Bundeswehr "Jugendoffizier" at school discussing (1) Natos Pershing2/cruise missile introduction. At one point the greeny blurbt about "chances of survival". The Bundeswehr guy sadly shook his head and started:
Local powerplant, one SS20 warhead, 100KT, airburst,5 km from here
Important part of the channel systen, one SS20 warhead, groundburst, 10km
Bundeswehr airbase, multiple warheads, ground and airburst, 20km
Major railroad and railyards for loading/unloading tanks prior to the channel crossing, airburst, 2km
Your chances to survive: NONE!
The class was a tad silent and Billy looked green...
(1) Actually he showed us what a blabbering, clueless fool Billy Birkenstock was
I recall seeing an interview fairly recently with a military type who was senior in NATO back in the day. He was asked what the plan was for a defence of Western Europe.
"Well, the plan was we'd try to keep them on the other side of the Rhine until the Americans got their kit across the Atlantic."
"Would that have worked?"
"No, not a chance. They'd have overwhelmed us well before the Yanks could get their heavy stuff over in significant quantity."
"Ok, so in that position what would have been done."
"There was only one plan really. Fall back, get the tactical nukes released, nuke their armoured spearheads in Germany, then cross our fingers and see if they felt like escalating."
"What? You mean the only plan was that NATO would use the first nuclear strike? You can't be serious."
"I'm deadly serious. It was the only workable option we had.".
"And what if the use of nuclear weapons was not approved?"
"Ah, that would be a political problem and it would then be up to the politicians to discuss our surrender terms.".
I'm guessing that the Germans weren't exactly delighted with this approach, which appears to me to revolve around either using Germany for nuclear target practice or handing it to the Soviets.
The thing I never get is that everybody 'high up' seems to have made the assumption that all the little people would rather be sacrificed than live under the Soviets.
Now, I really don't like the idea of living in he Soviet Union - but I like the idea of being dead even less.....
If the Ruski tanks really had rolled over the border, would the politicians have thought, 'Well this is worse than death' and pressed the big red button?
Some say the definition of a tactical nuke was: lt. exploded in germany. Our US "protectors" where a tad to free with both candy and nukes. Could not hold their alcohol or their release orders
With the Brits you could at least have a brew or a beer while discussing compensation for the Chieftain sized hole in grandmas tulips...
ahem...there was another component to the plan at least in the early days.
They intended to drop a TA Airborne Brigade - 3 battalions of Paras plus 1 regiment of heavy mortars - in between the first & second Russian echelons to slow everything up. The army had worked out how many men they would lose at each stage and how they would regroup into smaller and smaller units before day 5 attempting to break out in 5 man teams. I think we worked out they would have taken 97% casualties at that point.
My source was told that in late 1962 when he was issued with his travel warrant and placed on 24 hours notice.
Also in Essex...
Used to play around the site when I was a kid, we lived in the village.
Not as impressive as the Kelvedon Hatch one but still of interest... http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/m/mistley/
Was fun trying to get through the fencing around the facility.
The Anstruther bunker has a similarly comical sign, but for anyone in the north it's definitely worth a visit. Distinctly sobering government information films of the time runnnig on a loop, advising on what you should do with the excess broken bodies cluttering up your nuclear shelter.
Piles of ancient comms kit on display too.
growing up in the 70s, the threat of nuclear war was somehow "normal". So much so, that when the great hurricane hit London in 1987, for a few moments I was convinced the USSR had bombed us - howling winds, eerie darkness, and telephone and radio out. After frantically spinning the radio dial, I finally hit radio Essex - 5 minutes of which was enough to make me wish they *had* dropped the bomb ....
Driving through Chipping Ongar one day saw the 'Secret Nuclear Bunker' sign on the mini roundabout and made a note to visit it. It is indeed an interesting tour. Mind you whilst the sign is new I suspect the rather large mast probably gave the game away to the Russians. That and having a 'bungalow' with CCTV everywhere.
And actually it's the only site I found using Apple maps....
I know it's been a while but had to be done :-)
"How much the villagers knew about the facility I’m not sure ..."
You do now - we all knew, at least in the mid 1970's - local children went to both Ongar and Brentwood Schools, so those towns would probably have an inkling as well. The original entrance is via a very narrow lane, and not the signposted route - check out Google street view! No parking via the original entrance though!!
I used to visit Princes Risborough a while back, leaving High Wycombe - a miserable excuse of a town - travel along the A40 and hang a right just before West Wycombe, on to the A4010.
There was a RAF base above Saunderton (Lacey Green?) that was 'secret' except for years of convoys of trucks used to cart dirt down and later convoys of readymix concrete travelled up.
It is hard to imagine that even the most short-sighted Russian satellite of those years could miss the desecration of the countryside. All these groundworks scattered around the UK installed at the greatest expense.
In my early work days I worked for a notable company that used to bury VHF transmitter-receivers in the green fields of the UK, all fed through miles annd miles of underground conduits that carried comms and electricity between our underground chambers and the nearest "telephone exchange". These pits had emergency generators, air pumps and antenna - all designed for remote control.
About 16 years ago I happened to be in an area I had worked in and decided on a small diversion. Took some hunting but finally I located the steel doors of one site and the rusted manual release switch and peeped in. All the equipment, even the pneumatically raised mast/antenna, was there but it was obviously powered down.
I wonder just how many other millions/billions pounds lie buried across England? All wet dreams of government done for nought.
You should see RAF Latimer, a few miles away, they didn't even clean the mess up!
There was a lot of effort spent on photo-recce of the Soviet Union, with various high-flying aircraft such as the Canberra and the U-2 demonstrating that it was hard to intercept high-fling aircraft. Whether the Soviet Union even managed the same over the UK, I've never heard anyone say. But once satellites could do the job, both sidescould fix the locations of what was visible, and Moscow wasn't quite where the official maps said.
Rough rule of thumb: any bunker completed before 1960 might not have been on enemy maps. And how would those bungalows have looked on the photo-recce images? Google Earth shows it as rather hidden among the trees, almost too hidden, and the radio mast is in the sort of place a radio mast might be put for all sorts of reasons.
There were always more targets than bombs anyway. And you could never be sure that any bomb would arrive where intended. And it wasn't a good idea to have two missiles aimed at exactly the same location. Some of the odd-seeming targets were just locations chosen so that several missiles were close enough to the "real" target. Do you drop one warhead on Parkeston Quay, or do you lay out an overlapping pattern to cover Harwich and Felixstowe? Shotley Gate Post Office might be as good an aiming point as any.
"There was a RAF base above Saunderton (Lacey Green?) that was 'secret' except for years of convoys of trucks used to cart dirt down and later convoys of readymix concrete travelled up."
Having worked there, I dispute the idea that it was secret. The signs outside were something of a giveaway that this was RAF High Wycombe, headquarters of RAF Strike Command.
Regarding that both Western and Eastern HQ's were all known locations, that was irrelevant - the strategy was detente, in that you had an escalation if you were going to be over-run by conventional means, as well as time to launch an MAD retaliation against an attempted pre-emptive strike. So the protection of the sites was primarily against conventional weapons, where you couldn't justifiably launch a nuclear attack in reponse. Should High Wycombe and Northwood be targeted by nukes big enough to take them out, we'd have launched our submarine based missiles before the incoming arrived.
The hippies always hated MAD, but it actually worked rather well in avoiding conflict. A vast combined waste of money of course, and one that bankrupted the USSR, but only two real questions arise:
1) Was the USSR a credible threat in term of an unprovoked invasion across Europe?
2) Better Red than dead?
"Having worked there, I dispute the idea that it was secret. The signs outside were something of a giveaway that this was RAF High Wycombe, headquarters of RAF Strike Command."
Indeed, the Strike Command bunker was very public mainly as a result of a huge fuss when the National Trust allowed it to be built on their land against the wishes of a fair proportion of the membership. Plus the signs as mentioned - in pre Sat Nav days they were jolly useful for finding the place if one had to visit.
Loving the communications history segments on here. This bunker and the BT tower articles were very interesting.
There is the remains of an early warning defence system in Maidstone in Kent, which is a fun visit. see http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/c/coldblow_ace_high/index.html
Also for more info on derelict buildings view www.28dayslater.co.uk in particular the military section
i went recently with my kids who were about my age at the time of the stuff in the 80s.. i made them watch the videos shown that we used to see on tv and we had to stop watching them as they got scared. i said this is what we had to live through at your age.. great to visit and will do again without the kids so i can read everything properly.
p.s does anyone remember the other series that was on tv of a dad built a bunker in his house and tricked the family into thinking nuclear war had started? eventually the kids found out it hadnt at all and thats how it ended...
"p.s does anyone remember the other series that was on tv of a dad built a bunker in his house and tricked the family into thinking nuclear war had started? eventually the kids found out it hadnt at all and thats how it ended.."
I think you're thinking of a one off TV play. Possibly with Sheila Hancock in it.
I know of this place only because it was the set of a dreadful film called S.N.U.B. (Secret Nuclear Underground Bunker). The only reason I watched this straight to video garbage is because my old boss (think a fat, bald version of David Brent with neither the wit or charm) was in it. He was some zombie type thing and he got repeatedly shot and smashed over the head. Who wouldn't want to see that happen to their cretinous boss?
There's a wonderful film available on one of the excellent BFI COI collections called "The Hole in The Ground", made in 1962, and I believe it was filed at Kelvedon Hatch. It's available on YouTube as well, but broken up into 6 10-minute pieces. Well worth a watch (sorry if it has been mentioned already, but my lunch hour is precious!)
I'd love to visit a place like this, but I doubt it would fly with the missus, who is the driver in the household!
As previous posters have touched on, this was probably down to a token, "we might as well - we ought to do something," effort to fool the USSR, plus a more concrete desire to fool Joe Public. Ideally, we weren't supposed to notice all those lumps, bumps, concrete structures and masts that were scattered around the country, let alone worry about what they might be for.
"In the event of nuclear war, the role of the RGHQs was to house the key government and military staff needed to run the country after the bombs had finished falling."
So that they could do...? Fuck all, basically. A concrete bunker to preserve a bunch of morons who's few skills would be totally obsolete if they ever left it.
I still can't get my head around how stupid people are.
I LOVE the road sign. That alone is worth the read. And since I live 3 blocks away from it, have a link:
http://www.camp-x.com/camp-x.htm
(yes its a tad cheesy and plain, but I have to give the fellow credit, since no one else is really trying to preserve the knowledge, including the gummint)
There were quite a number of bodies passed through there, more than a few from 'over 'ome.
I went there a couple of years back with my mum as something to do one quiet afternoon. Whilst the place is indeed fascinating, we both got a serious case of the creeps as I think we were the only people there, the smell, bad lighting and the odd noises the place makes. Add in the mannequins and we were seriously glad to get out of there.
Growing up with the threat of nuclear attack should have really bothered me but I don't remember it freaking me out particularly. But then I suppose it was because it was always there, in the same way that we were always alert to the IRA attacks.
Growing up in the 1960s-80s was a time where "Worldwide Thermonuklear War" was always in the back of the mind. But like IRA / RAF / <Insert local terrorist organisation blowing up political figures>, the occasional "PLO flight to Afrika" and other elements it was background. The Red Army could be on Kurfürsten Damm in 15min and in Bonn in 6h (4 driving, 2 in a jam at Kamener Kreuz) but you could not change it if you where in "panik mode". So we lived on and lived with it.
In many ways the world was easier back then when the game of "Cowboys and Cossaks" where played on a global scale.
Brilliant place - I once spent a whole weekend there doing an Airsoft (Paintball without the paint) event. Realistic looking weapons and mag caps, "time-in" for the whole weekend (As in an attack could come at any time) - was very cool.
The public liked it too as they got to see "soldiers" walking around the place making it look lived in.
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