Monday, October 31, 2005

Britain's secret Cold War underground city for sale

It covers 240 acres and has 60 miles of roads and its own railway station. It even includes a pub. But it is 120ft underground, and has a population of only 4 maintenance workers. And it's for sale.

Code-named Burlington - and classified top secret until its decommission last year - it was built in the 1950s (in a former mine near Corsham in Wiltshire, about eight miles from Bath) to house Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan’s cabinet, the royal family and 4,000 civil servants in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. (A spur line was built inside a tunnel on the main London to Bristol railway as an escape route to the subterranean city.)

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. Pictures of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly are pinned to the walls.

“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.

(Excerpted from yesterday's Sunday Times. )

1 Comments:

Blogger Film Chic said...

This is fascinating. It's like Neverwhere come to life. Anybody want to go with me on the investment? :-)

7:08 AM  

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