The subterranean complex that was built in the 1950s to house the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan’s cabinet and 4,000 civil servants in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack is being thrown open to commercial use. Just four maintenance men are left.
A visit there today involves walking into an opening in a hillside and taking a lift down to the bunker. The only sentry is a garden gnome outside one of the entrances. Inside, it is like stepping back 50 years.
Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked. There are boxes of government-issue glass ashtrays, lavatory brushes and civil service tea sets.
“It was like a set from The Avengers,” said Nick McCamley, author of Secret Underground Cities, who lived locally and first discovered the existence of the site in the 1960s.
Personal Note: Secret Underground Cities is in my top five book titles of all time. Not #1 (that honor belongs to the classic Paladin Press title Successful Armed Robbery by Harold Long), but up there with the big boys.
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