Churchill's Bunker, London Open House Day

Built in 1939, Churchill's Bunker - Paddock - was a top secret wartime bunker meant to house Churchill and his war cabinet. However, he only ever used it once for a war cabinet meeting, in October 1940, and absolutely hated its dampness.

Paddock sits under some Stadium Housing Association homes in Brook Road, Neasden, North West London. Over the years that it has been abandoned, funky mould and calcite stalactites grow. The many rooms - some functions of which remain unknown to this day - included a place for the war cabinet to meet, a BBC radio broadcast studio, telephone exchanges, a diesel generator, what was one of the oldest air conditioning systems in the world (not working now!) and a military control room.

You can only go visit a couple of times a year - and during London Open House day today, Rob and I joined a group of about 23 others and wandered along the muddy, sticky floors, mouldy ceilings and rusty equipment.

The photo at the very top of this post depicts the old telephone exchanges which linked up to the Cabinet War Rooms, among others. The others are just eerie atmospheric type shots of what else you can see. For some colour photos taken in considerably more llight than we experienced, see Subterranea Britannica's exhaustive galleries.

Posted by kimgilmour at September 18, 2004 10:14 PM