The reality of a real nuclear bunker

I HAVE had a fascination with "secret places" since I was a teenager. It probably started with a television programme in the 1980s that revealed there was a secret tunnel that ran deep under Manchester from a telephone exchange near Piccadilly out to Salford and Ardwick.

It is strange how a secret world of fortifications grew up during the 1950s and into the1990s without anyone really being aware what was going on.

I remember cycling along a lane near Preston in the early 1980s and stumbling across the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation bunker on Langley Lane. Blink and you would miss it!

Public interest in secret sites had two peaks, one in the 1960s at the height of CND's membership and the Aldermaston marches and in the 1980s when the Thatcher government allowed the Americans to base cruise missiles at Greenham Common amidst great public protest.

Around the time of the Cruise Missile protests, two books were published, WarPlan UK -- The Secret Truth About Britain's Civil Defence by Duncan Campbell and Beneath The City Streets by Peter Laurie. Between them they documented the plans to defend the country in case we should ever be attacked by atomic weapons.

The books detailed communication networks, telephone tapping facilities, hidden food depots, secret control centres, and plans to devolve national government out to the regions.

Since these books were published, interest among the general public has gradually waned.

In the early 1990s the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain collapsed and the threat of nuclear attack from the Eastern Bloc diminished to the extent that many of the secret sites were sold off to private owners.

A few of these have been turned into museums.

The nearest publicly open site is the former Regional Government Headquarters at Hack Green near Whitchurch in Cheshire.

The site has had a varied history. From 1941 it was an RAF military radar station. Following the Second World War it became a heavily protected Rotor radar station designed to detect incoming Soviet bombers.

In 1958 it changed roles again by becoming part of a joint civilian and military air traffic control centre.

In 1976 the site was purchased by the Home Office and converted into a protected regional government site at an estimated cost of £32 million pounds. It became operational in 1984 and remained in a state of readiness until 1993, before becoming a museum in 1998.

The upper floor of the bunker is largely taken up with museum displays covering the activities it has been involved with over the years. There's a decommissioned nuclear bomb, and displays of Geiger counters, radiation protection suits, and radar equipment and a Royal Observer Corps display.

The observant will notice a teddy bear in its own survival suit carried by a child.

But it is across the corridor from the display rooms that I found to be the most harrowing part of my visit.

In the sick bay that was designed to treat the bunkers' inhabitants there is a display of a casualty being treated for radiation injuries. The make-up on the dummy is pure Hammer Horror 1960s-style, but the soundtrack being played in the room is chilling. The voice of a narrator describes the effect on a female patient of a high dose of radiation and how she is dying from horrific internal bleeding. This is accompanied by the sounds of the whimpering groaning patient fading away.

Having said that, much of the museum is fine for children -- after all it's just a 20th Century version of a castle. However, if you've got primary school age children with you, give this room a miss -- it left me with nightmares.

Downstairs in the basement you enter the real nerve centre of the bunker and the rooms that wouldn't be out of place in a James Bond film.

The plant room, with a generator large enough to supply a small town, purifies all the water and filters all the air coming into the bunker.

There are the communication facilities for the emergency services, the military and the home office and two telephone exchanges, one with manual backup.

Then there is a large office furnished pretty much as any Civil Service office of the period would be with desks for the officers responsible for all of the major government departments. The staff, in true Civil Service fashion, gave pride of place to a tea urn! There's the attack warning centre crammed with red telephones and flashing lights that would have been used to sound the air raid sirens across the region.

The civilian survivors would have been kept informed of events from a makeshift BBC studio. All of this was serviced by up to 140 staff who were accommodated in dormitories in shifts using a system known as 'hot bedding'.

The only person who would have had his own room was the regional commissioner, who would have had the full power of government over the region.

The museum's prize catch must be the BMEWS (British Missile Early Warning System) display from RAF High Wycombe that would have been used to alert the country to incoming missiles and to launch a retaliatory attack. There are two cinemas showing a selection of public information films, some of which I felt to be unsuitable for children.

I was puzzled by the bright yellow dcor of the staircase leading back up to the surface level. It turns out that the staircase was the only place in the building that a suicide could be attempted, and that psychologists had recommended that yellow would act as a deterrent.

In the corridor between the lower rooms there is an excellent collection of Civil Defence Volunteer recruitment posters, which gives an insight into the thinking of the time.

Perhaps we should remember that for many people at the height of Civil Defence in the 1950s and early 60s memories of the Second World War were still very fresh. I found it fascinating how dated much of the equipment looked despite only being decommissioned in 1993. But then the events that Hack Green was prepared for have faded into the past only recently. If you look hard enough as you travel around you can still see the signs of preparation that were made. Shortly after leaving, I found a sign pointing to a buffer depot -- one of many houses used to store a reserve stock of vital foodstuffs in case of national crisis.

Although the museum provides work sheets to be used on a mouse trail around the site I would consider carefully how some children might react to a few of the exhibits. But if you are curious about what a nuclear bunker looks like or to gain an insight into a little documented part of recent history, it's well worth the visit.

FACTFILE

HACK Green Secret Bunker is open every Saturday and Sunday in winter from 11am- 4.30 pm. Open from February 17-21 for half term holidays. From the third Saturday in March until October 31 every day from 10.30am - 5.30pm. Admission: adults £5.30, student/OAP £4.30, children 5-16 £3.30. Wheelchair/disabled only and carers £2.50, family ticket (two adults and two children) £16. Hack Green Museum: www.hackgreen.co.uk

How to get there: By road was easy, taking the A666 out of Bolton, then onto the westbound M62, then onto the M6 southbound leaving at junction 16 signposted to Nantwich. Then follow the very large brown information signs pointing to the SECRET BUNKER off the A530 road to Whitchurch. The total journey is around 60 miles, but is mostly motorway. There is excellent parking and there are train stations at Nantwich and Whitchurch.