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Nuclear bunker...

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Nicko

Sun Nov 21 2010, 08:21PM

Registered Member #1334 Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615

Purely by accident we ended up today at the Kelvedon Hatch Regional Government HQ nuclear bunker -

- video at

Fantastic way to spend a few hours in a fully populated (all equipment pretty much still there) cold war bunker. This is where the Prime Minister of the UK would have gone in the 1950s should everything have gone a bit nasty. Piles of old Geiger Counters & stuff everywhere - old Tektronix & other scopes, just tons and tons of stuff. Operating theatres, dormitories, canteens, plot rooms, telephone exchanges, BBC studios, regional & government control centres - everything down to old DEC, Honeywell & other kit - decomissioned in 1992 or thereabouts, so a huge amount of computing history there too. 600 people could be sealed in... Really fun. I did find one bit of kit with Dekatrons and an "Airburst" detector & rangefinder which had edgelit displays - took photos and will upload those when my wretched children return the camera USB cable...

Recommended for everyone - fascinating place...

Edit: Should have mentioned - whole place is inside a vast faraday cage, built in gravel to allow the structure to move, all pipes etc. in have flexible couplings so they don't rupture if the Earth moves for them...
Edit: Also, it has tungsten rods all through the concrete walls and big concrete & tungsten discs buried in the soil above to help break up any incoming shock wave fronts...

Example of the piles of stuff just lying around in there:

Cheers

Martin King

Sun Nov 21 2010, 09:00PM

Registered Member #3040 Joined: Tue Jul 27 2010, 03:15PM
Location: South of London. UK
Posts: 237

It's worth keeping an eye out for visits to "Paddock"

There's generally only one or two visits organised a year, it has to be pumped out before a visit due to the building of a housing estate above it causing cracks in the concrete. Email Nick (you can find his Email at subbrit) to find out when the next visit is likely to be.

Martin.

Mark-H

Mon Nov 22 2010, 10:26AM

Registered Member #607 Joined: Tue Mar 27 2007, 10:39AM
Location:
Posts: 64

It's amazing how many "nuclear bunkers" are on our doorsteps. I live in Sidcup, Kent and literally 5 mins away is a cold war bunker behind the library at New Eltham station. I'd seen this single story, concrete "lump" in the past and assumed it was something to do with the railway station behind it.
But now I know, all the signs are there. The sheer "weight" of the consruction. The squat, flat shape. The over engineering. The air vent/filter construction.
Apparently, there have been "open days" but it's a pretty benign place with very little to actually see.

And to go off on a tangent, I recommend London's secret tubes by Andy Emmerson.

Oh yeah, there's a (or was) a bunker underneath the telephone exchange in Eltham too. This building was an SSC (Sector Switching Centre) and an important link to Whitehall during the cold war. My mum used to check the switchboard there yearly.

Cheers...

Proud Mary

Mon Nov 22 2010, 12:16PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

With the government blethering on about 'terror' all the time, you'd think they'd have resuscitated these fossis of Cold War beliefs, these memorials to the madness of our ancestors.

Bored Chemist

Mon Nov 22 2010, 09:53PM

Registered Member #193 Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 07:04AM
Location: sheffield
Posts: 1022

I used to work just up the road from "Paddock"
Here's the place- now a carpet warehouse

Proud Mary

Mon Nov 22 2010, 10:19PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Bored Chemist wrote ...

I used to work just up the road from "Paddock"
Here's the place- now a carpet warehouse

Funny how they seem to share the same architectural inspiration as the nastier kind of public toilets.

Martin King

Mon Nov 22 2010, 10:53PM

Registered Member #3040 Joined: Tue Jul 27 2010, 03:15PM
Location: South of London. UK
Posts: 237

Bored Chemist wrote ...

I used to work just up the road from "Paddock"
Here's the place- now a carpet warehouse

That's not Paddock, that's Oxgate, different bunker. Paddock was the alternate seat of government for WW2, Oxgate was an Admiralty bunker.

Martin.

dingo27

Mon Nov 22 2010, 11:50PM

Registered Member #890 Joined: Tue Jul 10 2007, 10:06PM
Location: Slovakia
Posts: 180

Its quite funny they put house on exit, what if explosion ruins that house, so they could not go out?

Nicko

Wed Nov 24 2010, 09:43AM

Registered Member #1334 Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615

dingo27 wrote ...

Its quite funny they put house on exit, what if explosion ruins that house, so they could not go out?

That was a real problem - there is an alternative exit up through the ventilation system, but as the two entrances/exits are only a few hundred metres apart, I'm not sure a nuclear blast would differentiate between them... There was cyanide etc. in the bunker...

OP updated with photo...

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