It’s 40 years since the film Threads was shown on British TV. It portrayed the effects of a nuclear attack on the city of Sheffield, England and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization. It therefore seems apt to publish a tour I had of the Hack Green Regional Seat of Government Bunker museum.
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Nestled in the heart of Cheshire, Hack Green Nuclear Bunker is a hidden gem that offers a fascinating glimpse into the Cold War era. I had the pleasure of exploring this historical site with Rod Siebert who originally bought the bunker and volunteer David Smith, who shared their extensive knowledge and passion for this remarkable place.
The bunker contains many unique artefacts such as the largest public collection of nuclear weapons casings in Europe, including Polaris, Trident, Chevaline and WE 177, the UK’s last airdrop nuclear deterrent.
Other rare and unique items include the Queen’s transition to war telephone, which would have been used by the UK government to communicate with Buckingham Palace in the event of war.
We also explored some of the areas not accessible to the public such as the life support systems. My favourite is the BBC studio, and the government departments that would have been operational during a nuclear crisis. David explains the psychological toll on the people who would have been stationed there, knowing that their families were outside in the midst of a nuclear attack.
Hack Green is not just a museum; it’s a time capsule that offers a unique and sobering insight into the Cold War era. Whether you’re a history buff, a fan of military technology, or simply curious about this hidden piece of history, Hack Green is a must-visit.
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Related episodes
- The man who built his own nuclear bunker https://pod.fo/e/12af02
- Cold War leaflets and documents https://pod.fo/e/157f2
- Assigned to a government bunker https://pod.fo/e/13303
- Visit to a Royal Observer Corps monitoring post and interview with the Chief Observer who served in the post https://pod.fo/e/f82a
- Alistair McCann who has preserved a Royal Observer Corps monitoring post as a museum in Northern Ireland. https://pod.fo/e/f83d
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Transcript
Hack Green Nuclear bunker offers a fascinating glimpse into the Cold War era
Hack Green Nuclear bunker is a hidden gem that offers a fascinating glimpse into the Cold War era. I had the pleasure of exploring this historical site with Rod Siebert, who originally bought the bunker, and volunteer David Smith, who shared their extensive knowledge and passion for this remarkable place. The bunker contains many unique artefacts, such as the largest public collection of nuclear weapons casings in Europe and the Queen’s transition to war telephone, which would have been used by the uk government to communicate with Buckingham palace in the event of war. We also explored some of the areas not accessible to the public, such as the life support systems. I’m delighted to welcome Rod and David to our Cold War conversation.
Ian: How did you acquire the bunker? First of all, what made you think this was a good thing to buy?
Rod Siebert: Well, I was involved in all of this, so I knew these places because I used to work for the Home Office. So I had a career in commerce and also a parallel career with the government. But when I retired from commerce, it was just coincidentally when these sort of properties becoming available and I wanted to set up a communications business. So this became available with the tower and all the infrastructure. So that’s why I purchased this as a communications business. And it was a very successful, ah, and has been and still is communications business. However, although all that was done, it was suggested to me that, well, maybe you should use the unused spaces as a museum. And that’s what happened.
Ian: And then the rest is history.
Rod Siebert: Yeah.
Ian: So what was in here when. When you took it over? Was there anything, much of the original stuff?
Rod Siebert: Not it. Just a light, just the life support.
Ian: Right.
Rod Siebert: So every. Every room was completely empty and, there was nothing here apart from dust and there wasn’t much of that.
Ian: So we’re just opening one of the outside hatches.
This had the most money spent on it during its refit in the 80s
Is there anything that’s particularly unique about this bunker? Ah, compared to some of the other rotor bunkers with regards to the other.
Rod Siebert: Rotor conversions, this had the most money spent on it. It was about 35 million pounds in the refit in the eighties. The raison d’etre, behind that was that this was one of three of these iGHqs that were designated to either run the UK or indeed to assist in the running of Europe if that was required. The rest of them were quite. If you’ve been around any of them, they were much, much lesser sort of bunkers. They didn’t have that sort of spend or anything like that. But having said that, they were going to roll out a number of the features that they invested in here m into some of the other bunkers, but they decided against it at the end of the day.
Ian: Yeah, well, I went, I’d been to Alkambury and they built that magic mountain bunker like in 1988 and finished it and then, you know, a year later it was relatively redundant. Then.
You worked in the subordinate headquarters to the primary war headquarters
I think you mentioned earlier you used to work for the home office. So were you working in any of the bunkers or ponds?
Rod Siebert: Yeah, I mean, I was a. The subordinate headquarters at Langley Lane at Preston.
Ian: Okay.
Rod Siebert: so the primary war headquarters, as you know, were down south and Langley Lane. Nobody knew it was the subordinate headquarters to that.
Ian: And so if the call had come, you would have been in there?
Rod Siebert: I would have been in there, yes.
Ian: And what would your role have been in the bunker?
Rod Siebert: Basically scientific. So it was all to do with fallout and that sort of stuff.
Ian: What did you think about, you know, if you’d got that call, would you have definitely gone and left family and friends behind, the same as everybody else?
Rod Siebert: So it wasn’t a question of leaving your family or anything of that nature or the risk. It was more a question of duty. Simple as that. And, if you were appointed to do duty, you, you discharge that end off.
Ian: And you think nuclear war was survivable in the UK, that some lives would have been saved through the civil defence?
Rod Siebert: Well, you can conjecture about that if you wish. But if you have a look at where there has been considerable catastrophes like, Chernobyl, floods in India, you know, even nuclear, incidents like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where bombs were actually nuclear bombs were used against people, one thing actually links all of those occurrences, even though they were completely different in nature. in every single case there were survivors and it was for those survivors that this headquarters were built.
Ian: How were you recruited? Was it a tap on the shoulder or did you apply for the role in the bunker? How were you recruited into that scientific team?
Rod Siebert: No, that was moons ago. I originally was with the, Royal Observer Corps. And then you move on and do stuff and then you take courses and you end up doing something totally different, in any organisation, whether it be nuclear defence or indeed the HSBC bank.
Ian: So this is almost like a busman’s holiday for you in terms of maintaining a bunker, like this and being involved in preserving this history.
Rod Siebert: Yeah. But as I say then, it, was all secret. And also it was with purpose here. The only purpose is to, preserve this for future generations and the museum and what have you. And of course, operate it as a commercial site.
Ian: Absolutely. So what can I see that the public doesn’t normally see?
Rod Siebert: Well, of course there are the secret tunnels between here and Manchester, etcetera, etcetera.
Ian: Yeah. And you’ve got the aliens downstairs as well. Yeah, yeah.
Rod Siebert: Yes. The secret door where we had the alien body parts.
David: Yeah.
Rod Siebert: Good grief. over the years there’s been a number of, shall we say, myths. And there was a very popular group in the 1980s called Smack waterjack who made a, record called something strange going on. A hack green. It’s on the Internet, on our website. And really it’s more a question of people. There’s anything secret? people always expand on what that may be.
Ian: Absolutely. People love a conspiracy theory.
Rod Siebert: Conspiracy theories. But certainly when I was involved in all of this, at whatever level, there was nothing that I knew, that was secret that ever made its way into the public domain. so, it’s all theory and conjecture and what have you. And certainly secret tunnels and all that.
Ian: Sort of stuff because you actually served in one of these.
You must have done a number of exercises then, if you remember
To actually understand a bit more about your experiences, I mean, you must have done a number of exercises then, if you.
Rod Siebert: Oh, very much so, yes. Yes. Yeah.
Ian: And what was that experience like, doing that?
Rod Siebert: The same as any other exercise, really. Again, discharging your responsibilities, doing your duty.
Ian: Yeah.
Rod Siebert: And trying not to be bored because, I mean, you know, these things were overnight or even over two days. and, you know, it can be a bit, you know.
Ian: Well, I think David was telling me that one of the feedback that was from one of the exercises was that, there needs to be some form of entertainment for people, if they were going to be in here for any length of time.
Rod Siebert: Yeah, because, I mean, for, example, if tomorrow I’d have ended up on exercise, or alternatively call to duty, I brought the Daily Mirror with me, or the mail or whatever it is from the previous day. You can only read it so many times and it would be a fairly guaranteed thing on exercise that if you left anything like that about when you went back to it, somebody had done the crossword.
So when did this open as a museum? 25 years ago
Ian: So when did this open as a museum?
Rod Siebert: 25 years ago. And, they still keep coming here in their tens of thousands of.
Ian: I mean, do you find there’s more interest in this now with like, war in Ukraine and that sort of thing?
Rod Siebert: You could say that. But an actual fact, interest has never waned.
Ian: Right.
Rod Siebert: Because obviously this is a particularly specialist place.
Ian: Yes.
Rod Siebert: Yeah, it’s, you know, if you’re interested in animals, there are an awful lot of zoos you can go to. if you’re interested in World War two, there’s a lot of world War two museums you can go to, but, you know, for the Cold War and atomic stuff, there isn’t that many places to go to. And this is one of the largest.
Ian: And that’s why I’m, you know, keen to support your work here by, you know, doing this interview.
Rod Siebert: Yeah, well, we survived purely on visitor income, so, it wipes its nose, but it’s an expensive thing to run. We do a lot of filming here, both commercially, you know, documentary tv film. We’ve just finished Wong from Netflix. Before that it was Golda, the history of Golda Meir with Dame Helen Mirren. before that it was the remake of the quest file and so on and so on and so forth. Every year something turns up, you know. Yeah, we got one lined up next year for Disney, I think it is. You know, this is a godsend.
Rod recommends I try out the bunker’s nuclear bomb experience
Ian: What I’m fascinated by is what you managed to source to fill the rooms, because, I mean, you’ve got unique pieces like early warning system from high Wycombe M. I mean, how did you manage to acquire this stuff?
Rod Siebert: Friends in low places.
Ian: Okay, so your, your network because you worked in the business of these bunkers?
Rod Siebert: Yeah, well, yeah, it was more a question of, after the burial came down, the various people that I knew left their job, but an awful lot of them in the civil service went up as opposed to sidewards. So, I, knew a few folk and, they’re very much heritage minded as well. So there was the opportunity to access, you know, bits and bobs that you would not ordinarily be able to access. Well, for example, the. We have here the largest collection of nuclear weapons in Europe that the public can come and see. that was something that we did at cabinet level with Aldemassen, the nuclear weapons establishment there. Awe atomic weapons establishment that we arranged for that to bring in their words, not mine. Nuclear weapons into the public domain to make them more public friendly.
Ian: Make, them all cuddly.
Rod Siebert: Yeah. but at the end of the day, where do you go to actually see and lay hands on real nuclear weapons as opposed to pictures of them? Will you come to hat green?
Ian: Absolutely. If there were, like, just a few items you recommend that I would see at, hack green, what would you say are the highlight? The must see items?
Rod Siebert: The must see item has to be the UK rayoc displays, right? The ballistic missile early warning system displays, yeah. And room, which you’ve seen with the frozen in time with the exercise and the missiles incoming, the minutes to impact on our cities and all of that sort of stuff. you don’t see that anywhere else?
Ian: No.
Rod Siebert: And it’s all came from Ukraio. It’s all authentic kit.
Ian: And I hadn’t, because I visited this place on countless occasions and it just goes to show, I should read the captions more because I hadn’t realised that’s what I thought it was. Maybe an amalgamation of bits and pieces, but I hadn’t realised it was the actual setup from high Wycombe. Yes, and it’s quite chilling seeing that. Six and a half minutes to impact.
Ian: Rod recommended I tried out the bunker’s nuclear bomb experience.
Ian: So just stepping into the nuclear bunker experience, which I’m turning on now.
Speaker F: Please take your seat. You are about to experience what it could be like to shelter from a nuclear attack. there are audio visual effects, including some very loud sounds, and flashing lights that some visitors might find frightening. If you are nervous, a child, or have a medical condition that might put you at risk, please leave the shelter. You can now imagine that you are sitting in your shelter at home awaiting a nuclear attack.
Speaker A: Please stand by and await further information. We interrupt regular programming to bring you a message from her majesty’s government. Please stand by and await further information. This m is an emergency warning from the BBC. Information of a possible nuclear strike against this country has been received.
Ian: So there was a big flash then.
Speaker F: M.
Ian: And that was the blast wave. Another flash.
Speaker F: You were only 6 miles from the nuclear blast, that landed, on nearby Manchester. Despite surviving the initial blast, you and your family would now stay in your shelter for 14 days waiting for the deadly radiation and fallout to clear. The simulation is now finished. Please exit the shelter.
Ian: So, inside here with me is a mock up of what a family, shelter would be, which is basically a couple of doors leaning against the wall with sandbags and suitcases and stuff piled, ah, on them. but that was very sobering, and I’m now going to go back out into the light.
What do you think is continuing fascination with the cold war
Ian: I then met up with David Smith, who’s one of the volunteers at hat green.
Ian: David, how did you first become involved with hat green?
David: So I came here for the first time ever, way back in like the late nineties, early two thousands, with a school friend and his parents thought it was the coolest thing ever. Basically never left. I’m 30 now, so 22 years of repeat visiting.
Ian: So you’d never really experienced the cold war. So what do you think is the continuing fascination with that period?
David: I think it’s a very overlooked period, and I think it’s one of those subject matters that is now getting more public attention. Because when I was in school, we didn’t really cover it. I don’t think many do. So it was more of a, we did first world war, second world war, a little bit of the cold war, but it was mostly the us side. I think it’s kind of more in the public consciousness. There’s been like a lot of post apocalyptic, kind of nuclear style video games, like fallout and stalker, and it’s kind of brought it to a sort of younger demographic who perhaps hadn’t encountered it in like normal educational.
Ian: And of course this is the call of duty.
David: Yeah, of course, as well. I think it’s kind of. There’s been a lot of films as well, I mean, bridge of spies, and it’s kind of, sort of seems to be seeping more into the public consciousness.
Ian: Well, even stranger things, it’s got that eighties Cold War vibe about it. You’re absolutely right. And I’m certainly seeing it through the podcast and increased interest in that cold.
David: War period, I think it comes down to as well, like we were talking earlier before we switched the microphones on about people are now wanting their story of service to be told, whereas perhaps in years past they couldn’t have done because it was still classified or, you know, it’s now kind of become real history, kind of quote unquote.
Ian: Absolutely.
So we’ve just walked up a huge concrete ramp that curls around the bunker
So we’ve just walked up a huge concrete ramp that curls around the side of the bunker, so that this would have been the main entrance to the bunker.
David: this was put in in the 1990s for fire compliance reasons. We can’t have one way in and one way out, unfortunately. So it took three days pretty much, of solid drilling, 24 hours round the clock with the dark.
Ian: So these are new doors.
David: New doors.
Ian: Oh, wow.
David: Rod’s has got a habit of turning these sort of things up. So we drilled a massive hole through the side of the bunker to put the double doors in and I think it kind of blends in quite well.
Ian: I thought it was the real deal.
David: It was a loading bay originally. So this ramp wasn’t here. It was kind of up to sort of about the level of the double doors and then just a shake drop.
Ian: Right. So we’re now in the entrance area and we’re looking at a, display of various missiles and a lovely model of an Avro Shackleton. Love an Avro anything.
David: Love an Avro, as you can imagine. So we’ve got some nuclear warhead storage. I believe those are trident storage containers. We’ve also got another one out in the car park that people should probably pay more attention to. That’s a we 177 which is our last airdrop nuclear deterrence. They can be deployed either as straight air drops or retarded by parachutes. That one’s about 400 kilotons.
Ian: So these were like the tactical nuclear weapon that would be dropped by the likes of the v force the Vulcan, even buccaneer and stuff like that.
David: They had a smaller version of this that could be underslung under a harrier. Under one of the wings of a harrier.
Ian: And what about these ones with the wings? What are they?
David: They’re, shipped to ship missiles. Like anti ship missiles. We kind of didn’t have anywhere else for them but it kind of just. They just.
Ian: It certainly hits you when you come in. And a fine display of Vickers. Vickers Bren and a peert over there which would have equipped the cold war home guard because they reinstated the home guard in the 1950s. And this is the sort of equipment they would have been issued with. Okay, let’s move on. Canteen. So is this the original?
David: It is indeed the original canteen and.
Ian: Naffy, we just walked past the bunker. Cat. Goulash.
David: Everyone loves goulash.
Ian: Yeah.
David: Here’s our niche.
Ian: Into that fur all over you.
David: Yeah. You get goulashed.
Ian: Yeah, do.
David: So.
Ian: So what we’ve done is we walked through the bunker and we’re now at another entrance. And this would have been the.
David: This is the original front. Oh, basically. Obviously, you can hear in the background the simulated Geiger counters. the control room, which is the brains of the bunker, is just there. That’s decontamination. But this is the main entrance.
Site was used as a bombing decoy during second world war
So while we’re here, I may as well go through sort of a brief ish history of the site and kind of how we came to be Hackney. So in the 1941. Let’s start there, that’s, that’s a good year to start. We were a railway decoy site under project starfish for crew railway station when Starfish was binned off, because it frankly was not a very good idea.
Ian: So just to clarify, this would have been a bombing decoy. So when the Luftwaffe came over, they would think, here, was Crewe railway station.
David: They built a replica of Kro railway station in the middle of a field because Crewe railway station is actually up five or 6 miles that way. When starfish was canned, because frankly, it didn’t really work, it became Mersey radar. So radar was kind of very much in its infancy of the second world war and they needed kind of large open spaces. So we had the RAF turn up her load of trucks and it was like sort of temporary sight. Lots of radar on trucks and things. There was no permanent buildings for many years here. what the guys did find when they turned up here in the second world war, in the middle of winter, so it was covered in snow, was that they had an almost unlimited supply of wood to keep warm from dismantling the starfish site. So the entire starfish site was basically burned down for firewood. We carried on as Mersey radar right the way through the second world war into the sort of, early cold war period. And then Project Rota came about, which was a network of, like a few dozen radar stations kind of built around the country in hardened buildings. This one’s an six reals, the most famous type of the r three s, which are the ones with the little bungalow as a guardhouse, whereas this is a semi sunk blockhouse with like the deep shelter beneath. So in 1953, the building that you are now standing in was built on this site. Rota then persisted up until 66, where we became a joint operation between civil air traffic control and, the MoD to monitor flights in and out of airports and, you know, so everyone kind of knows what planes are where. There was also UKWMO purposes, for, you know, unidentified things on radar. We picked them up here once all that came to an end, she was put on care and maintenance at the back end of the sixties and then there’s sort of a brief gap where it was just a guy would come in with a broom once a week cheque. The building wasn’t on fire, lock up again and leave. And then in the 1970 71, to be exact, the site was purchased from the Ministry of Defence by the Home Office. The Home office turned into an RGHQ, which is regional government headquarters. So in the event that the balloon would have gone up. This would have been one of the sites that government would have been devolved to with a commissioner based charge of the region.
Ian: So a autonomous local government headquarters. And what is the region that this would have been?
David: So this is region ten, specifically, this is bunker number ten two. So we are the second bunker in region ten. The first bunker is at Langley Lane in Southport, which is a former, Royal observer corps headquarters bunker. It was rejected from the RGHQ programme because it’s quite prone to flooding, apparently. So while they were looking around Cheshire going, well, where else can we use? Somebody went, well, we’ve got that radar site up at Hat Green and the rest kind of is history. You could lock down for three months. So the theory is, balloon goes up, bomb goes off. Government is then broken up in Westminster and devolved to the regions. They would then be here for three months underground, completely sealed off from the outside world. And after three months, in theory, anyway, fortunately, it never came to operational use. They would be resupplied, fresh diesel, fresh water, where available, because we are just down the road from the canal. So they would bring the diesel and the water and the fuel up the canal.
Ian: So even if the roads were.
David: If the roads were in canals were blocked, then, yeah, then we’re in trouble.
Ian: Then you’re in trouble. Yeah, yeah. So they would have opened this door after three months. and, yeah, in theory, express and, well, probably not very fresh air, fresh ish at that point.
It was 350 civil servants plus maybe a dozen or so from military
So, how many people would have been in this bunker when it was an RGHQ?
David: It was 350 civil servants, plus maybe a dozen or so from the military. So you had like the army, navy, RAF, and then you had representatives from police, fire service, emergency services. But for the most part, it was civil servants. They were government and employees. They weren’t military, which is something that kind of. A lot of people get wrong about. This bunker, it was military, but for the purposes of most of the cold war, basically from, like, the seventies all the way up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was home office, it was government, not military.
Ian: And how many did you say that.
David: 300, 5350 people in.
Ian: Wow, I imagine it was a smaller number.
David: Well, they were running it on what’s called a hotbed system. So effectively, you never had your own bed. One chap would sleep while the other chap was working and then he would wake the sleeping chap up and immediately jump into his beds of sleep. So the beds were never, ever unoccupied because it was like round the clock on shift. As a hotbed system.
Ian: Wow. Wow. And how many floors does this have?
David: So two main floors, which is this, and then the deep shelter beneath. But we also have a mezzanine level we’ll be looking at later.
Ian: Right. this is part of the behind the scenes.
David: Yeah, we pull all the stops out for conversations.
Ian: That’s what we like to hear. That’s definitely what we like to hear.
Anyone coming in from outside after a nuclear attack would have had to be decontaminated
Ah.
David: We will proceed, I think, through to decontamination.
Ian: So anybody coming in from the outside after a nuclear attack would have had to have come in here, to be decontaminated. What was that process? Was it just a quick shower?
David: In a manner of speaking. During fallout conditions, they wouldn’t have used the entrance we’ve just been at. There is an entrance in the philtre room, which, again, behind the scenes stuff we’ll look at later. They would have come through that door, up through the cable ducts and in here, jump in the shower, wash everything off, clothes, then go in the big concrete box behind you, which is called the hot box. That is basically just a chute that drops about 150 odd feet under the bunker, kick the contamination away. Obviously, air is sucked in through these vents and vented out rather than round the rest of the bunker because we can’t have radioactive particles cutting about. If you heard that noise, it was time to have another shower.
Ian: Yeah.
David: So that’s the, Geiger counter.
Ian: Geiger counter, okay. And is this the original shower here?
David: Yes, and it still works. Our ex manager used to actually shower in here as a child, so.
Ian: Wow. Wow. And various vintage Geiger counters. I mean, you’ve got an amazing collection of authentic equipment in this bunker.
David: So just on the table, we’ve got a survey metre, which is basically a Geiger counter with a big probe. The Geiger counter at the back is a plessie. People that are familiar with the cold war will know them from Royal Observer Corps use. They were pretty extensively issued to the Royal Observer Corps in the eighties. The sealed foil bags of spare gas mask philtres, that is a water poisons testing kit. So it is effectively a small field laboratory. You can fold out and test everything.
Ian: From kind of nerve agents.
David: Nerve agents right the way up to, like, heavy metals. We’ve got a few of the decontamination bags. So the radioactive clothing comes off, goes in the bag, bag goes in the hot box. On top of those we’ve got MBC casualty bags. So if anybody was injured, flying debris, shrapnel blast, whatever you get, put on a stretcher and they put you in this thing that looks like a body bag with like a window so that all the contamination is trapped in the bag.
Ian: Okay.
David: As they carry.
Ian: And how did you breathe in that?
David: Ah, with difficulty. They’re made out of a kind of.
Ian: So they’re not airtight?
David: They’re not airtight. They’re sort of made out of the same material as the british chemical biological nucleus. So it’s kind of a canvas with like a charcoal rubberized liner.
Ian: Does not sound particularly pleasant.
David: Having been in one at a reenactment event, I can confirm it is not very pleasant.
The corridor is from when RAF base was laid operation as an RAF base
So we’ll continue down the corridor, I.
Ian: Think, because while walking through there’s the. The, keyboard. These are still the original.
David: They are all the original keys.
Ian: Wow. To all the. So you’ve got the. The, male, other ranks, restroom, plotting room, west training room, boiler room.
David: So the keyboard, as it goes, is from when this was laid operation as an RAF base. Hence, you know, Royal Women’s Auxiliary Corps and the wafts, because there wouldn’t have been wafts on site when it was a regional government headquarters. So this is the original keyboard from when it was an RAF base.
Ian: Wow.
David: We had to get them all recut so that we can use them to unlock doors and things in here, which was a, hell of a job. It kind of doesn’t really need stage.
Ian: I can imagine your local Timpson’s was overjoyed to see you come in with those. And if Timpson would like to sponsor the podcast, please get in touch or the bonker. Yeah.
We now have the largest collection of nuclear weapons on public display in Europe
Where are we now?
David: So we’re now in the main museum room. This originally was for the uniform services, so police, fire, ambulance and all the military services.
Ian: So there would have been loads of desks in here.
David: which is a question that we get asked a lot is why didn’t you restore it 100% to original spec? And, what we usually say is that there’s only so many filing cabinets and book beds people can look at before they get bored. So in here we’ve kind of tried to show various different bits and pieces of the cold war heritage.
Ian: And I think it makes sense. You have to be a visitor attraction. I mean, m just to finance the place that’s going to bring in a broad range of people in. You know, you and I, we’re really into cold war history. I would like to see it as it was, but completely get the need for that. And you’ve got some phenomenal pieces here. I mean, I think I read somewhere that if the nuclear weapons cases that you had in here were armed. you would be, I don’t know what, the fifth largest nuclear power, something like that.
David: so we had the chaps in from ore recently. That’s the atomic weapons establishment, based at older master. For people that don’t know, they very generously have donated quite a lot of the nukes in the collection. and they came round just to have a look and see what they’d given us and kind of like, do you want any more? Obviously, we went, yes, yes, we do. Lots more, please. But they turned up, had a look around, didn’t realise we had half the stuff we had. We now apparently have the largest collection of nuclear weapons on public display in Europe.
Ian: Wow.
David: So that was gratifying.
Ian: That’s definitely going in the, promotional material.
David: But we’ve got. Yeah. So more we 177s from the corridor outside, which are the airdrops, you’ve got Polaris and Trident warhead storage containers. We’ve got an early Trident warhead right at the back, which is Project Sheveline, which is a multi stage warhead. It also contains flares for defeating anti missiles.
Ian: That was a british modification, was. It was to the american Trident system. And some excellent videos. If I’m just watching a video here of.
David: It’s the WE 177.
Ian: Yeah. Ah.
David: So this was the video that was put out by the atomic weapons establishment to kind of promote we 177.
Speaker A: Container.
David: So, as you can see now, the foul nest burning a we 177 container with a missile inside. Yeah.
Ian: Brilliant.
The queen’s transition to war telephone was donated to the museum
David: So we’ll start kind of, I think, with these cabinets, because I think there’s some really sort of star items.
Ian: One of your passions here, really. Tell me what we’ve got here.
David: So, I think the most obvious and probably the thing we’re most pleased to have in the museum collection is the queen’s transition to war telephone. So this is not a replica thereof. It is not a facsimile, it’s not something we’ve just knocked up and put some signs on. This is the actual warfare would have been used by the queen.
Ian: So where would this have been?
David: Bin in Buckingham palace.
Ian: Wow. That is genuine. Wow.
David: Yeah. It was donated to us by the diplomatic wireless workshop some time ago. Extremely generously. It is the only one that’s on public display anywhere in the world. Yeah, it is one of one and we are extremely pleased to have it.
Ian: That is phenomenal.
David: But it was for transition to war, so in the event that there was an incoming nuclear strike, parliament, would phone the queen on that phone and go, your majesty, do we have permission to enact the emergency Powers act? She would then say yes, hopefully. and then, like, the whole thing we were talking about, about the devolved regions and, sort of the civil defence would kick into effect, you know, effectively making the commissioner, who was like the head boss guy here when it was RGHQ, it would give him the power to basically have life and death over everyone outside in region ten.
Ian: So do cheque out the episode notes, because there will be lots of photos of the items that we’re describing here today. But obviously, podcasts can only be good up to a certain point. You have to come to hatgren. Please do to see this stuff. Now, this box looks interesting here. Transition to war broadcast tape. So they had pre recorded messages that this would be played on the BBC?
David: Yes.
Ian: Is this.
David: So once it stopped being the BBC and became the wartime broadcasting service, which is an entirely other thing, they would play these tapes, which were effectively a precursor to protect and survive.
Ian: Protect and survive was the blanket name for the UK Civil Defence programme to try and protect civilians in the event of a nuclear attack.
David: So it was, we are transitioning to war. This is what you must do. Have your refuge room ready. You know, two weeks supply of tinned food and fill your bath full of water and put a bit of plywood on it, that sort of thing.
Speaker A: We have told you how to choose a fallout room in your home. The best place is farthest away from the roof and outside walls. Your fallout room will protect you, but you will make it even safer by strengthening a small part of it. This part will be your inner refuge during the worst of the attack. Making a refuge is not difficult. The main things you will need are shovel boxes, cartons or large plastic bags, earth or sand, start collecting them now.
David: But, yeah, we have a lot of stuff here and I think if we were to cover every individual item, we’d be here.
Ian: Yeah, we’re just going to do the edited highlight. Well, the edited highlights, yeah. But has to be seen to be the amount of items here.
The Civil Defence corps only existed up until the 1960s
So we’re now looking at a display, of Civil Defence corps, which was only around up until the 1960s. Yeah.
David: So it was a continuation of the wartime civil defence service, effectively, when the Luftwaffe stopped bombing because peace happened, the civil defence was stood down. And then in 1947, once the Soviets got hold of the bomb, people started going, maybe we should sort of recreate a civil defence. So passage of the Civil Defence act in 1947, the corps really got going in 1948 when they were issued with uniforms. I mean, looking in the cabinets. Like, if you ever come here, you will see a lot of it is very world War two.
Ian: It is. It’s the battle dress. Well, this is a dark blue, like, battle dress top here. Within that itchy wool, having warm stuff.
David: Like this for reenactment, it will take your skin off. Like, even if you’re wearing a shirt, your skin is coming off. Like, you have no choice in the matter.
Ian: Yeah, yeah. And once it gets wet, it stays wet.
David: Yeah.
Ian: I can. I think one of my favourite items in here is the extremely rare gas proof tea container still full of two pounds of brook bond tea. Are you ever tempted to open that?
David: We’d like to, but I suspect that what’s in there now is basically just dry rock spores.
Ian: Yeah.
David: yeah, I mean, that’s a particular. Like, world War two, but they continue to issue them to the civil defence. So you will find World war two stuff in civil defence corps bunkers all over the place. I mean, if you go to the one, for example, there’s one at Gravesend, which is the civil defence control centre for Gravesend.
Ian: Have you got anything here, from the reactival of the Home guard?
David: No, not yet.
Ian: Not yet. So there’s a call out there if, anybody’s got anything, if anybody’s got.
David: Anything from the fifties iteration of the Home Guard that they don’t want anymore and would like to give it to us, please pop in because we will happily take it off your hands.
Ian: So what have we got here?
David: So we’re now stood in front of the UK radiac and Geiger collection. This is the largest collection of nuclear monitoring equipment that is for monitoring radiation levels, fallout and so forth in the country. We are the national collection here. So we’ve got a little bit of everything, really. I mean, up top we’ve got Soviet, we’ve got west German, we’ve got Polish, we’ve got east German, we’ve got some communication stuff down the bottom, like the soviet version of the Enigma machine, which you just don’t see. Morse code machines from Germany. Burst transmission, it goes on.
Ian: Wow. Wow.
David: We’ve also had stuff donated by the public. I mean, most recently, somebody very generously donated us a load of civil defence training films from the 1950s. So while I’m here, if anybody that’s, like, listening to cold war conversations can digitise film and would like to do us a favour, please get in touch because we’d like to have them digitised and displayed somewhere in here.
Ian: I’m sure there’s somebody out there in Cold War conversations land. Who can help you with that? An atomic bomb test periscope? You’re going to tell me this is the only one in the country, aren’t you?
David: Or something like that? Yes. Yes, I am. because it is german for viewing nuclear tests. It also has a built in blast effects calculator. I mean, we keep hammering away at it, but honestly, you have to come here. Like, if you like cold war tech and you like cold war buildings and you like cold war, we’ve got 33,000 it come and have a look.
Ian: There. Ah, is a huge amount.
David: There’s stuff here that you will not see anywhere else. I can promise you that. That is the hack green guarantee. We will find you something interesting that you haven’t seen before.
The soviet threat is the name of your reenacture event
Ian: Okay, so the. The soviet threat is the name of your reenacture event that you have two times a year.
David: Once a year for the time being. For now, always at Easter. So the next one’s Easter 2025. But this is where it used to be a storeroom originally, so we’re kind of stood in where they keep the biscuits brown at the moment. So we’ve kind of used it to show the other side. There’s a lot of, like, british and allied kit hanging around and we wanted something specific to show the other side. So we’ve got all sorts. It’s not just russian, we’ve got East Germane, polish, soviet tanker. Soviet high altitude pilot. Soviet NBC officer.
Ian: So this is again, Rod sourcing.
David: Yes. Rod just turning this stuff up. We’ve got, Hungarian. Like, he just has this habit of turning stuff up. Travelled pedal car.
Ian: Oh, that’s nice. I’ve never noticed that before.
David: Yeah, this is what I mean, just notice things.
Ian: Nice rpg seven.
David: Yep.
Ian: What’s that, a practica or a Zenith? It’s a very nice trigger grip, slr. Always been envious of one of those.
David: Which I believe it was Stasi issue. I think that’s one of our east urban bits.
This is the secret communications room for government departments during the 1970s
Ian: Okay.
David: So welcome to life support.
Ian: Wow.
David: The comment we often get when people walk in here is, ooh, it’s like something out of alien.
Ian: Yeah. It’s got that sort of spaceship feel about it. There’s loads of ducting and massive life support console with flashing lights, or seventies, eighties console with flashing lights and various push buttons.
David: So it’s a 1970s console. Quite interesting kind of personal interest thing here. We had the guy that installed all of this stuff in the seventies come back as a visitor.
Ian: Wow.
David: So he was telling us that when he turned up, they drove out into the middle of nowhere. They were not told where they were going. They were not told what this was going to be used for. He just remembers turning up in here. And it was fairly unpleasant and fairly damp, as you can imagine. M because they’re designed to be run with a constant airflow. Damp tends to build up if the airflow is not constant. It’s why you’ll notice if you ever come here, we have both sets of doors open because it stops the damp. And he worked out here for four days. Apparently it was stinking because at the time, the home office had installed a maggot farm at the end of the lane to keep people away.
Ian: Brilliant. Oh, that was the deterrent. Maggot farm.
David: They were turning up sort of with cows and pig carcasses and just sort of throwing them over the fence to farm maggots. So the smell was pretty grim, but it kept people from, prying up the lane too much and going, watch the concrete building.
Ian: Anybody from Gru or KGB?
David: No, that’s true. So this is the cypher room. It’s the secret communications room. Anything encoded.
Ian: So this would have been here?
David: Yes.
Ian: Right. Okay.
David: It’s just sort of a little alcove. there’s a reason that it was positioned here, which we’ll come to, but anything that was classified or secret, top secret, above top secret, which is the classification not many people know about, come through here, encoded. They would then decode it and sort of distribute the information where it was needed.
Ian: Right.
David: so we’ve got telex in here, we’ve got sort of various scramblers and switchboards.
Ian: And if you love old tech, this is a vision.
David: Yeah, we’ve got quite a lot of it.
Ian: And a, lovely old, sort of security poster on a, combination safe saying, lock it up, keep our secrets secret. She made a copy of that and sell it in the shop. People would love that.
David: So we will move through into sort of, I guess, the first kind of behind the scenes area. We occasionally open this up for soviet threat and things. We’ve had it open today because you were coming, but this is government departments so effectively. And it’s going to go back to this because this is one of the rooms that’s in the process of being restored at the moment. So we are going to open it.
Ian: Back up, so restore it as it.
David: Would have looked, as it would have been when we were operations and IGHQ. Yeah. But effectively it’s, you know, government departments. Every government department that existed, because obviously it was devolved government you no longer have the Westminster civil service. They’d be devolved here. So you’d have representatives from, like, ag and fish, the Ministry of food and that obscure ones that you wouldn’t think of as well, like the DHSS and like the tax people. Because apparently even after apocalypse, like tax must go on. Death and taxes are definitely certainties, even in the event of nuclear war.
Ian: I mean, somewhat more ominously on the walls of various maps and things like that. But the one that I’m looking at now is marked population estimate as that Zen zero, 132 hours, d plus seven. So seven days post strike. Post strike. And the headings are, the local districts. So Macclesfield, Knutsford, Wilmslow, and the columns are headed. Surviving population, refugees, total remains, remains, human remains. Okay, I should have got. I should have guessed that with.
David: It’s interesting if.
Ian: So, they didn’t want to put dead.
David: Dead bodies. Yeah. There’s this thing where because of, I think, and I’ve never had this confirmed, but what I highly suspect from looking at a lot of these documents over many years is that they tried to avoid death and dead bodies or corpses. And you occasionally see it in local literature, but at a national level, it’s always human remains or remains. And I think it was to try and sort of distract the civil servants from what was going on upstairs. I mean, anybody that’s ever seen things like the war game or threads will know, like what the aftermath of a nuclear war looks like. And it is bleak.
Ian: Yeah, very.
David: So I think even if you were safe down here, there was a huge psychological toll on, the people that were working down here because you’re thinking.
Ian: Constantly, well, and also, the thing is, if you were down here, your family’s up there.
David: Yeah.
Ian: You don’t bring your family in here.
David: The way it would have worked is that in the event of a transition to war, a policeman would have just turned up at the house, knocked on the door, been like, mister or misses? So and so. Well, yes, you have to come with me now. And they weren’t allowed to ask questions, they weren’t allowed to pack a bag. It was, just, come with me now. And they’d be driven here and their families would never know where they went. They never know what happened.
Ian: And so did they know. They must have known prior that they would get called to.
David: Some of them didn’t. Some of them didn’t. Some of them were just a name.
Ian: Complete bolt from the blue. And your name had been put on the list for, I don’t know, working in the canteen here.
Even when it was an IJHQ, this was still a secret site
And you just suddenly get hauled off.
David: Yeah. They were civil servants, so it was effectively they withdrawn as, like, this person is good at their job.
Ian: Yeah.
David: They will therefore be put into emergency contingencies planning, but because of the secret nature. Because even when it was an IJHQ under the home office, this was still a secret site. It was still under the OSS, the official secrets act, though. They just wouldn’t have known. Some people knew. The commissioner, obviously would have known, who is like, the guy that runs things. But other than that, you were just a name on the list. You may have been told in advance. You may well not have been told in advance.
Ian: Imagine some people saying, well, I’m not coming.
David: Interestingly, when it came to it, on every exercise that they ever ran, because some of them were run as surprise exercises, as if it was real. Like, so, like, literally, they would just have a copper turn up at somebody’s door and be like, you’re coming with me. And don’t kind of try not to ask me too many questions about it. Nobody refused. There were very few people who actually refused outright and said, no, I’m not coming.
Ian: You’d think they’d have contingency. So if that person says no or isn’t there, you go to the next one on the list.
David: It was mostly wasn’t there. I don’t think saying I’m not coming was an option, really. I think it was. You could either come with me peacefully, or I can handcuff you and drive you there.
Ian: This room is quite an expansive room. It’s probably one of the biggest rooms in the bunker. one of them, I guess so. And those chairs look awful. Authentic. Yeah, they’ve got that look of.
David: Some of it is original RJ HQ furniture. Some of it is stuff that definitely look government issue. Those are government issue. They are not the most comfortable things in the world, it has to be said. Sort of metal frame and green vinyl.
Ian: Yeah.
David: But other than that, it’s kind of a room full of maps with useful information.
Ian: And this is that when you have your film screenings and some of the other events down here, this is where you show them. So you have the opportunity to watch, like, threads or the war game, a nuclear apocalyptic film in a nuclear bunker, in the room where they would have been planning what they were going to do with the remains after a nuclear attack. Doesn’t get more authentic than that.
David: The threads thing, I kind of have to confess, again, kind of behind the scenes, it was a little bit deliberate, because it is basically a one, one replica of the council shelter from threads. I mean, it really is. That went down surprisingly well. Lots of grey faces afterwards, but threads will do that to people.
Ian: So these contact names and numbers, were they, are they made up or were they. Well, no, that looks like a genuine.
David: Yeah, the genuine numbers. Yeah.
Ian: So this was still on here when you, when the bunker, it’s one of.
David: The few rooms that wasn’t meddled about with too much. When they did the strip out, they kind of left this stuff. A lot of it was taken away, but I think a lot of the stuff that was kind of screwed into walls and things.
Ian: These.
David: Some of the writing on these boards is original to the last exercise. So once we’ve got it up and running. So as you can see, we’ve got 1919, 1988, like, wow. And they’ve just kind of sat down here in the dark ever since.
Ian: Really incredible, because I, you know, I hadn’t imagined you’d still have a lot of stuff that was originally in here because often these places were completely stripped. But that’s really eerie looking at, because these are the, you know, these are places of names of places I know because this is my local bunker and it sort of brings it even more home to you when you, when you see this stuff and names of people who would have been in the bunker. Wow.
David: So as you can see, like talking of your local area, this is region ten two. Region ten is basically the whole of Lancashire.
Ian: Right.
David: We’re Cheshire, Manchester and Merseyside.
Ian: Right. So control post nuclear attack of Liverpool. Well, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cheshire would have been here and the regional commissioner, would have had power of life or death over, the entire population of those areas.
David: And I do not overstate life or death, but we’ll move round to the commissioner’s office since it’s only next door.
Ian: That was a good segue, that, wasn’t it?
David: Yeah, exactly.
Ian: It’s almost as if I’ve been here before.
David: You angered about it, Arian? Surely not.
Speaker G: Paid for by the Hamm Office through the UK warning and monitoring organisation.
Ian: So this is the room that the regional commissioner, would have had.
David: Yes.
Ian: So the regional commissioner was basically the guy who was heading up the bunker and as I said before, was basically he had power or life or death over the, over the region. And he was the only person that had his own personal quarters, him and.
David: His principal oppo, who is next door.
Ian: Right.
David: We don’t show the principal blofters room because we use it for storage at the minute again, future projects.
Ian: And it would have been a he because it’s the 1960s?
David: Seventies, seventies. Eighties, yes. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think they’ve ever released anywhere a, comprehensive list of names of people that were regional commissioners, but certainly some of the people I’ve seen interviewed, some of the people I’ve spoken to doing this for a job, they’ve all been men.
Ian: M like, well, there’s that I can’t remember. Is it the Jeremy Paxman one where he’s interviewing one of the regional commissioners and he shows rather too much relish.
David: About the fact, oh, he’s enjoying himself.
Ian: He’s got power of life over the population.
Speaker G: In the end, it comes down to one man, a man with more power than he could ever have imagined, even in his grossest dreams or nightmares. Keith Bridge, a former accountant.
How much power do you have as controller after a nuclear attack
How much power do you have as controller as soon as the bomb goes off? Total power. Theoretically that would include power over the police, fire brigade, all that sort of thing, yes. And life and death. Powers of life and death, yes. What does that mean? That if people were looting, it would be, within my competence to instruct. They’d be executed. Would you expect that kind of situation to arise? Quite possible. It’s feasible. Does having that kind of. For, power, total power worry you? No.
Ian: I will show that video in the, episode notes. Wow. And these are the manuals that.
David: They are the Cheshire county council civil emergency contingencies planning for the eighties and nineties. Yeah, we’ve got obviously Rodney being Rodney and sort of turning stuff up for the collection. We’ve got a lot of the emergency contingencies planning advice. I think we may have basically everything right the way from the fifties through the eighties. Again, it’s, again, stuff we’d love to show people, but like, constant handling of this stuff. They are historical documents. Eventually they are just going to disintegrate.
Ian: Now, this is the room that I enjoy the most, being a. Being a broadcaster. the BBC studio. And so we’re now in the control room, room side of it, which is a beautiful piece of tech with faders and dials and switches and a lovely cup holder built into it. And that’s looking into the studio, the other side where I have had the pleasure of sitting at, one point when I came to one of the reenactment events.
David: So, yeah, from in here, the whole point was television. Obviously, after a nuclear attack, no longer works because of electromagnetic pulse, radio waves do. So the commissioner would broadcast out across the wartime broadcasting network, which was across all radio stations, would effectively become one radio station. So the commissioner would be down here broadcasting to the hold of ten two, saying, you know, stay indoors, help is coming, etc, et cetera, you know, don’t go looting or you’ll get shot.
Ian: That sort of thing, that cheerful information.
David: The interesting thing about this, and it’s something that, I always like to point out on tours, is this is. The audio will change because it’s soundproofing here. Yeah.
Ian: the soundproofing just changed there.
David: So this is the only place in the bunker you can see the original construction versus what was tacked on later.
Ian: I was going to say this wasn’t here before. No, you couldn’t see behind here. It’s just the soundproofing.
David: So we’ve had damage to some of the panels over the years, but it’s actually turned out to be a happy accident. So here, this original concrete outer wall, that’s two and a bit metres thick concrete. The bricks and the breeze blocks were put in in the 1970s when it was converted into an RGHQ.
Ian: So dividing up the rooms and changing the layout of the spaces because rotor.
David: Bunkers obviously had no need for a setup like this with it being entirely military and then like civilian aircraft as well.
Ian: Yeah.
David: There was no need to have a BBC studio. So when the BBC studio was put in, it’s one of the few places you can kind of see where we’ve tacked stuff on.
Ian: And I must say, very, very, precise pointing on these.
David: Yeah.
Ian: Good. Very, very neat bit of, Brick Lane there.
David: Only the best from the home office.
Ian: Yeah. And I love this room because you’ve got, you know, you’ve got the microphone here, you’ve got the lovely reel to reel tapes, a beautiful orange filing cabinet and, these day one, day ten, day 13. So they’re d plus.
David: Yes. So these were actually very generously donated by an ex BBC employee comparatively recently, along with the cart. So each one of those tapes contains information that would have been broadcast out of here had it not been like a personal broadcast from the commissioner.
Ian: Wow.
David: That were effectively just as it progressed. You would hear like, you know, stay in your homes and then like, by day ten, day 14, you know, we are coming to help you. You can soon leave your shelters, get ready to prepare to leave your refuge rooms and so on and so forth. They only go up to day 14. What would have happened had the radiation?
Ian: Two weeks?
David: Yeah, in theory, you would have been in a sort of protecting survive style door shelter with like, your entire family and supply tinned food for two weeks, which kind of doesn’t really bear thinking about, really. I mean, protect and survive in itself. I think people have watched it and I don’t think you digest how grim some of this, because it’s kind of very professional and represented very hopeful.
Ian: Protect and survive in some ways.
David: And in other ways, people miss the thing. Like, if you have had a body in your fallout room for more than five days, can you imagine?
Speaker A: After an attack is over and the all clear has been sounded, arrangements will be made as soon as possible to treat any people who are ill or injured. Listen to your radio. Details will be given about what to do, when to do it and how. If anyone dies while you are kept in your fallout room, move the body to another room in the house. Label the body with name and address and cover it as tightly as possible in polythene paper sheets or blankets. Tie a second card to the covering. The radio will advise you what to do about taking the body away for burial. If, however, you have had a body in the house for. For more than five days, and if it is safe to go outside, then you should bury the body for the time being in a trench or cover it with earth and mark the spot of the burial.
Ian: If you want the reality, watch when the wind blows.
David: Well, exactly.
Ian: Great space. And David’s trying to convince me to come along to one of their reenactor weekends, do it dressed as a press person, and maybe I could operate out of the BBC studio.
David: We could arrange that. We can certainly arrange.
Tell people all about the wartime broadcasting service. The background you can hear the protect and survive video
Ian: Tell people all about the wartime broadcasting service.
David: So we shall continue round, and in.
Ian: The background you can hear the protect and survive video there with Patrick Allen.
David: Intoning on very grim things in a very friendly way.
Ian: Do you know how much he was paid for that? Or can you imagine his agent calling him and saying, patrick, we’ve got a great gig for you. You’ll be the last voice people will ever hear.
Comsen shows us the original bunker where nuclear war games were run
David: So we won’t go in here because the audio is quite loud, but we sort of stood at the doorway to our cinema, or video theatre, as it’s sort of called on the plans. This is original to the building. It was for the sort of showing of entertainment, rest and recreation.
Ian: So these are the original seats?
David: Yes.
Ian: So they’re like classic cinema seats.
David: and it was for rest and recreation as well, showing trading films.
Ian: And so what you’re showing in there.
David: Is the war, the war games, which.
Ian: Is the 1965, I think, black and white representation of what, a nuclear attack on the UK would be like commissioned by the BBC but not shown until the mid eighties.
David: It was banned by the BBC because I think it was too realistic and it would have.
Ian: It is. I think it’s almost, in some ways almost more effective than threads.
David: I’ve always been of the opinion the war game is grimmer than threads in some ways. Maybe it’s the fact it’s a pseudo documentary, like maybe it’s the black and white, but there’s something about it.
Ian: Now I first saw that at the CND meeting because that was the only place you could see it prior to the mid eighties. And obviously it was a fantastic recruiting tool. so CND for my foreign listeners is the campaign for nuclear disarmament, which was the main peace movement in, in the UK during the cold war. It’s really powerful on the big screen.
David: We had a few reenactors watch it over one of the living history weekends. They were certainly coming out with some fairly grey faces. You’ll do that to. Yeah, so we’ll.
Ian: If you bring the kids here, they do conveniently have this spy mice trail.
David: And the Goulash trail.
Ian: And the goulash trail to the whole point of the entertain.
David: Well, and the whole point of the Goulash trail was to present a lot of this stuff in a more child friendly way. Yeah, I mean as child friendly as you can make nuclear war, obviously.
Ian: Now this, if you’re into eighties computer tech, you’d be in heaven in this room. So what is this room?
David: Welcome to comsen. this is effectively the heart of the bunker. We are now at the deepest point of the bunker. This is the reception room because as we go round you’ll see it was divided up by classification. So effectively in here is the not particularly classified stuff. This was the reception room. So non classified or classified would come into here.
Ian: Okay.
David: Secret and so on would be next door. As you can see, this is worth pointing out because a lot of people don’t know this. So you’ll see that the hatch is only one way. So there’s only a hatch this side that opens this way.
Ian: Yeah.
David: So that was so you could pass messages from the not classified side to the classified side. But people wouldn’t be passing classified messages to people that weren’t supposed to have a look at them.
Ian: Right.
There are little details about Cold War bunker that have been lost to time
David: So we’ll move through into.
Ian: I love these.
David: The teleprinters.
Ian: Very. No, the very seventies pattern on the idallic.
David: It’s an interesting story because we had some veterans around and one of their wives was involved. Apparently these were designed from camouflage patterns, in sort of funky, seventies psychedelic colours by the wives of officers.
Ian: Excellent.
David: Which is like. It’s like these little things that like we find here that just have been lost to time.
Ian: But that, those little stories, you know, that’s one of the reasons why I started cold War conversations because that wouldn’t even be a footnote in history. But it’s a fascinating.
David: Exactly.
Ian: Detail that brings a story much more to life.
David: What I’ve always said is we try and balance it here because obviously a lot of people will be interested in the military history. Like, you know, look at all the nuclear weapons and stuff. But there’s a lot here sort of hidden away, kind of bubbling underneath. It’s also social history.
Ian: Yeah, absolutely.
David: I mean I’ve always said as a civil defence reenactor, what I do is military reenactment m it’s almost social history.
Ian: Yeah. Because it could have been a civilian volunteer.
David: Yeah, exactly. I’m kind of showing the civvie side of it rather than like it’s all guns and bombs and grenades, which isn’t. It’s not that that’s not interesting. The social side of it, the civilian inside of it is becoming more forgotten as we kind of go down. I mean, stuff like, you know, officers wives designed the chairs, so would there.
Ian: Been women in the bunker as well?
David: Yeah. Do we have female and male dormitories? Again, back to exercise bright fire. They were found out that the male dormitories were, and I quote from the report, wholly inadequate in that we didn’t have enough of them. So they converted what was the entrance corridor that you could coming through the double doors that was then converted into dorms from a storeroom to kind of make more bed space.
Ian: And when was exercise bright fire?
David: That was in the early eighties, like 82, 83.
Ian: And so you’ve got like an after action report of ah, what needs to be changed.
David: So effectively they’d run these exercises almost as an academic exercise to kind of see where the problem is, where the problems aren’t, what needs changing, what could be improved. The RGHQ system and Brightfire was one of them. They ran a few like up into the 1990s, but so fully man and staff. One of these things, even for an exercise, is in itself like a fairly major operations kind of gather people and everyone that came down here, obviously like back in the day, would have had to have signed the Official Secrets act. So again, it’s stuff that like is being lost to history almost.
Ian: So is this how this room would.
David: Have looked at the time, in the 1980s, certainly, yeah. So this is the, VDU room, which is visual display unit.
Ian: I remember when we used to call computers VDU’s. And I remember very much machines like this with a very unergonomically, comfortable keyboard.
David: so the RGHQ programme basically had its own communications network. It’s called the ECM Emergency Communications Network. This radio communications console is part of, along with all the vDus. Effectively, this was, again, classified and secret information would come into here. hence, the one way directional shutters. We’ve also got the constant irritating whirring noise you can hear comes from the exchange, which is one of our telephone exchanges.
Ian: Right. So this is original telephone exchange equipment from.
David: Yes. It’s also under very sort of primitive PC server. Wow. And I mean, like, you’ve got boards.
Ian: That you pull out and.
David: Yeah, I mean, in terms of server technology is basically prehistoric.
Ian: Yeah.
David: But nevertheless, again, it’s equipment like this that would just be otherwise lost.
Ian: Well, and so. And you also get the authentic sounds that you would have had.
This was the backup communications for the home office should all of this fail
David: So before we move through, I think this is probably worth a mention. This is how best to describe this, I guess it’s a satellite dish on a big flight case. So this was the backup communications for the home office. So should all the kit in here fail, some poor guy would have had to have suited up into protective clothing and lugged this onto the roof.
Ian: There’s a satellite phone, yeah, from the 1980s. So with that dish fold up.
David: Yeah.
Ian: And fit in the case.
David: Yeah. But the case is. I mean, the case is not small.
Ian: No. I’ve walked past this umpteen times and never realised what that was.
David: It’s yet to be backup.
Ian: So it’s a very early satellite,
David: That the home office would have had to have used had all of this gone down. The telephone exchange door went down. They had no other way. So some guy would have had to have looked this up onto the roof trying to make it work, under fallout conditions, which.
Ian: Right. But the handset is connected to this. So the guy on the roof would have to talk through that handset.
David: Yeah. It’s horrific when you think about it, isn’t it? I mean.
Ian: Yeah. Wow.
David: I mean, I work here and even I’m occasionally surprised by sort of the. My ex manager used to describe it as kind of. Almost like a ruthless efficiency, a sort of complete disregard for people’s lives.
Ian: Do you find working here and preserving this history is almost too dark and it gets to you?
David: Yes. And, No. So I’ve run tours here and you talk about a lot of very bleak things. I mean, there’s no sort of light way of dressing up emergency contingencies planning. But the way I look at it and the way I encourage other people to look at it is, yes, this stuff is extremely bleak, but it is history. And I’m sure there are probably similar plans floating around now that we don’t know about, similar sites like this that are around, that we don’t know about. It is what it is. It’s government. But mutually assured destruction has worked, you know, so far, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have never been used in anger again. And I always say I would prefer sites like this to be museums, to be heritage, rather than, like, an active thing we have to be concerned about. I think it’s one of those where you can’t do this sort of thing for a living or even be interested in this sort of thing and end up pro nuclear weapons at the end of it.
Ian: So, dormitories, I take it?
David: Yeah. Female dormitory, we obviously divided by sex.
Ian: Yeah.
David: Prevent all sorts of sort of unsavoury goings on late at night in bunkers, but, yeah. This is the female dormitory.
Ian: these original mattresses.
David: Original mattresses. Original bunk beds. The stacked canvas beds against the wall, or original civil defence corps for welfare centres and things. But they were also used in places like this to provide additional bedding.
Ian: I mean, because these feel like they’re stuffed with straw or something.
David: Yes. It’s like sort of grass and straw in a big plastic bag. They were made by HMP prisons.
Speaker G: Ah.
David: they’re literally prison mattresses.
Ian: So these would have been sewn together.
David: Yeah.
Ian: By.
David: And some of them. I don’t know if it’s on this one, but on some of them it literally has, like, HMP and where it was made.
Ian: Like, Wandsworth.
David: Yeah.
Ian: Wormwood scraps.
David: They’re the same match. They were made in prisons and, they were mattresses for prisons. So height of luxury here at hat greens.
Ian: Wouldn’t have been cool if you’ve got one that had been stitched together by George Blake or, the craze. Yeah.
David: But, yeah, we’ve. I mean, I’ve slept on these beds. They’re not as awful as they look. I mean, it wasn’t a comfortable night’s sleep, but I’ve certainly had worse.
Ian: It was an authentic cold war night’s sleep.
David: Well, exactly.
This is the equipment Thatcher used to order sinking of the Belgrano
Ian: so what this electronic equipment you’ve got in here is. Wouldn’t have been in it?
Rod Siebert: No.
David: This is the very low frequency. That’s VLF transmitter from rugby. The reason it’s in here is because, frankly, it’s huge and we weren’t getting it down the stairs. It’s a relatively recent acquisition, this. Right. But this is the actual equipment. Not of the type, not like a replica there of whatever. This is the equipment that Thatcher used to order sinking of the Belgrano.
Ian: So the message that went to HMS.
David: Conqueror came off of this equipment to.
Ian: Sink the Belgrano came from this. Wow.
David: Yeah.
Ian: There’s gonna be a lot of wows in this.
David: Yes. I mean, if you’d like to test the bets, feel free. These are our two bedrooms.
Ian: These are the, test ones. Let’s try this. They are very narrow. It doesn’t feel too bad, but I can imagine after a while.
David: Yeah. When you’ve done about 8 hours on it, your back just goes to pieces. Like it.
Ian: Because it sort of sags in the middle, doesn’t it? Yeah.
David: We have had real actors in here who have complained about sleeping regions. So we’re nearly at the end of our usual tour now, before we get on to the good stuff, the sort of stuff that nobody else gets to sick.
Cold War conversations host gives behind the scenes tour of nuclear bunker
Ian: So we are, behind the scenes here. Okay, so I’m now having the behind the scenes tour. So this is the area where public don’t have access. And, we’re going to be looking at the philtre room. We just come through two double doors.
David: Sort of like an airlock from the decontamination room.
Ian: Right. And I’m standing on a grill which has like a 20 foot drop ish down, which is rather unnerving as it’s rather rusty. Anyway, so these are the I go to on cold war conversations. So the philtres are sort of like these.
David: These are, essentially just particulate philtres. We’ve got a sort of slightly more intricate philtre network than a lot of bunkers. Sorry. Spider. In that we also have ceramic filtration, which we’ll be looking at in a minute. But these are sort of your bog standard, like sort of bag type philtres in that it’s just sort of layers of resin impregnated woollen cardboard. And that’s just designed to trap particulate layers because obviously fallout is a particulate material. It is made of particles rather than say a vapour, like gas or some biological weapons. Dust or. Yeah, debris.
Ian: Yeah. And we are standing in what is like a concrete tunnel, which is where the air would have been absorbed from the outside. And we’re just looking out of a grill. We’re probably about 50ft off the ground here, looking out here to the transmitter mast and out onto the fields.
David: If you stand on the ramp, as you come in, you, you can see where we are. So as you come up the ramp and look sort of towards the bunker, as you’re coming in, it’s the air intake that sticks out from behind the mast.
Ian: Right.
David: So we are literally like kind of in the bowels of the bunker now. Like this is the main air intake for the bunker. As I was saying in decontamination, you may remember me saying that there was an access hatch for fallout conditions. I give you the access hatch for fallout conditions.
Ian: So what would that hatch have been used for?
David: So under fallout conditions, in event of emergency.
Ian: Yeah.
David: because you can’t come in through the main door because you risk then tropes and contamination all the way.
Ian: This is how you would get out.
David: This is how you get in.
Ian: Get in.
David: So there’s a blast door kind of just on the other side of that wall and down. Yeah, you come in through that blast or up a ladder, which is like those two little steps right through the, hat and then sort of through here, down the ladder, through the airlock and into decontamination. So as you can see, it’s quite an extensive philtre.
Ian: So we’re the other side of those fibre philtre.
David: Yes. So these are the outputs, the fibre on the outside, that way, that’s intake.
Ian: Right.
David: So this thing gets sucked through here, through the ceramic philtres which are just above our heads, which is kind of like a honeycomb network of ceramics. And then it’s distributed downstairs because the plant room is literally directly underneath us. And then circulated around the bunker is breathable air.
Ian: Okay. And these are all airtight because they’ve.
David: Got all the rubber seals things. Unfortunately, because of just the way it is in here, they’ve hardened a bit over the years.
Ian: But just.
David: Yeah, you will get covered in spiders.
Ian: Rather large cobwebs here. So, anybody afraid of spiders? Not the place for you, but luckily your intrepid cold war conversations host is not afraid of spiders. Mind you, it depends how big they are.
David: I guess it is huge.
Ian: That wasn’t the answer I wanted. The episode extras such as videos, photos.
Ian: And other content are available via a link in the episode information. The podcast wouldn’t exist without the generous efforts of our financial supporters. And I’d like to thank one and all of them for keeping the podcast on the road. Road. The Cold War conversation continues in our Facebook discussion group. Just search for Cold War conversations in Facebook. Thanks very much for listening and look forward to seeing you next week.