Underground 'Cold War City' For Sale

Hogwash McFly writes "A huge underground complex that was built as a nuclear refuge for the British Prime Minister in the 1950s has been put on the market. Code-named Burlington, the bunker now has a population of only four maintenance workers, yet sprawls over 240 acres and accommodates 60 miles of roads. Underground power stations supply energy for 100,000 street lamps and amenities include a railway station and a pub called the Rose and Crown. Among ideas suggested for the £5,000,000 bunker include a data centre, wine cellar, rave club or fifties theme park. It is not clear whether a tank for keeping laser-equipped sharks is included, however."

Comments

Re:Canada has something like that.

[ergo98]

I recall some Canadian relatives discussing a bunker called the Diefen Bunker. I think they said it's a tourist attraction now. They give tours as if it were a museum.

Good research.

http://www.diefenbunker.ca/

Bullshit

[John Hasler]

> ...sprawls over 240 acres and accommodates 60 miles of roads...

60 miles of 30 foot wide road covers 218 acres.

> ...100,000 street lamps...

That's 417 street lamps per acre, or one for every three feet of your 60 miles of road.

Re:Bullshit

[skatingloon]

Actually, it's not bullshit. If it's the place I'm thinking of (I'm pretty sure it is), it's called Monkton Farely, and like one of the comments says, everyone in the town of Bath knew it was there.

About 15 years ago, the place was bought for a nominal sum (5 million pounds is a hell of a lot more than they bought it for!) by a family who had the idea of creating a tourist attraction down there. They didn't do too well, but while they were in business we did manage to get down there. It was barely an 'attraction', but incredibly interesting, nontheless.

It's a truly amazing place. A lot of the infrastructure was decommissioned, so we had to use hand lamps - it was pretty spooky since it's obviously completely dark down there, and your head lamp doesn't do a whole lot to penetrate into the deeper bays and tunnels. Some of the major tunnels are indeed 30ft wide, and the lights are actually low wattage bulbs strung along the way.

One funny thing is that they stored a *whole lot* of ammunition down there just prior to D-day (I believe), and the only fire management equipment was a bucket of sand under each light - every few feet. I guess they figured that if there was a problem, all the fire extinguishers in the world wouldn't deal with it!

The there are a few things I remember particularly: The built-in power plant, air conditioning system (three huge stations with 30 foot fans) and the indentations left in the concrete from the bigger ammunition.

Apparently the train station intersects with the Box Tunnel outside Bath, Wiltshire. Every time I travelled from London to Bath I used to look out of the window of the train to see if I could see it, but no luck unfortunately. Apparently it's possible to find old quarry workings which lead you into the complex, but that sounds a bit dicey to me!

Here's an article about it - I'm not sure if this was the original one, but it might give you a flavour of what it's like down there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/the_exchange/connec t/bunker.shtml

Re:Very cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Times carried this story during the week with an excellent quote.

Jock Fraser, chairman of Corsham Town Council, said: "For years the Government denied it was even there but all the talk in local pubs was that if anything did happen, we knew where it was.

"The politicians might have built it for themselves but we were going to make sure we got there before them."

Image tour of Burlington bunker

[Animats]

Here's a tour. It's a huge installation. Not in bad shape for a bunker, but will need considerable work to be usable.