Underground Facilities

In England relatively few Cold War establishments were dug into living rock formations.Most of the early Cold War research and development projects and deployment programmes were run with a wartime urgency,which precluded the extremely costly and time-consuming business of creating underground facilities.Previously,during the Second World War(1939-1945),a number of tunnel complexes had been excavated primarily to house aircraft component factories safeguarding them from aerial bombardment.Due to the high cost of operating underground factories,and their relative inefficiency,most were abandoned soon after 1945.

The detonation of the Soviet hydrogen bomb in 1953 and the potential to inflict utter destruction on a small island nation led to a fundamental reconsideration of how emergency wartime government might operate.Prior to this date most protected bunkers had been designed to resist the comparatively lesser effects of atomic weapons.The new threat led to a renewed interest in the abandoned wartime tunnels that potentially offered greater protection and more space to house the many hundreds of civil servants required to administer a devastated country.

At Corsham,Wiltshire,the government acquired a former Bath stone quarry,wartime aircraft factory and munitions store.These were transformed into the government's main emergency war headquarters.In the event of conflict,around 4 000 civil servants would have co-ordinated the relief efforts for the survivors and maintained contacts with the country's allies and other governments,while the Prime Minister and an inner circle remained in communication with the armed forces,including Royal Air Force units tasked with delivering nuclear weapons.(https://www.daowen.com)

The tunnel complex operated from the late 1950s and was kept at varying states of readiness until it was finally abandoned and officially revealed to the public in 2003.Remarkably at this time it retained stores of equipment and furniture that had been placed there in the 1950s.In common with many Cold War sites the first challenge was to understand the history of the facility and the inter-related functions of its many rooms.In addition to traditional documentary research,a characterisation study was undertaken that mapped the functional areas and their inter-relationships within the tunnels and allowed the more significant area to be identified.The most important rooms were legally protected,including the Prime Minister's central operations rooms,a large telephone exchange,a fully equipped canteen from the 1950s,and a BBC studio.

Due to the harsh environmental conditions within the tunnels,some key facilities,such as the telex relay rooms are being reduced to rust.Wooden fittings are also subject to attack by fungi,whose spores may be injurious to human health.Stores of wooden furniture and stationery also represent a fire risk and will be removed,although a small representative sample has been saved by English Heritage for display at Dover Castle,Kent.The long-term survival of any remaining fittings within the tunnels is dependent on continuing the forced ventilation of the tunnels.Partly due to health and safety regulations and the high costs that would be involved in making this facility safe,it is very unlikely that it will become accessible to the public.In addition to the characterisation report,an extensive photographic record has been made of the tunnels.This has produced a record of areas that might be lost;it also provides documentation to assist with the monitoring of future deterioration,and through the Historic England website virtual access is possible to an otherwise closed complex.