Secret Nuclear Bunker - Essex Cold War Shelter

"The time has now come to make everything ready for you and your family in case an air attack happens” – Protect and Survive (Government Information Broadcast)

The Secret Nuclear Bunker in Kelvedon Hatch, Essex is an eerie but utterly compelling tourist attraction. It is certainly one of the most unusual locations in England and the official road signs ironically pointing to a “Secret Nuclear Bunker” have achieved a degree of internet notoriety.

Imagine. It is 1961 and negotiations over the Soviet missiles in Cuba have irretrievably broken down. Deep beneath the Essex countryside, the communications nerve centre is monitoring the radio chatter ... there are riots on the streets of Berlin, unconfirmed wire reports of Soviet tank armies sweeping across the central German plain. The sense of claustrophobia, of fear, is overwhelming. A helicopter swoops in and the Prime Minister and War Minister are bundled out. They enter the door of what appears to be a small, unprepossessing rural cottage. Neither man will see daylight again. Then the huge blast doors close for ever.

The Secret Nuclear Bunker is located just over twenty five miles outside London.This is no sleek, American facility of the kind showcased in a hundred Hollywood movies (think Terminator Three for a recent incarnation). Instead it is typically British – dingy, cramped and shockingly inadequate for the 800 soldiers, civil servants and Cabinet ministers who would have sought their final refuge here.

You enter the bunker through the portal of a tiny rural cottage. The only clue to the secret concealed within is a large radio mast that tops a grass mound. Make sure you pick up an audio guide for the tour at this point. Then pass the blast doors, follow the narrow, long corridor and eventually turn into a fully equipped communications hub. Here you will find rooms crammed with archaic switchboard technology, using a primitive version of the Internet on deep underground cables that would apparently survive an atomic blast. There is a fully equipped radio studio from which the Prime Minister would address the nation. Beyond is a cavernous planning area where military meteorologists would monitor the fall-out and radiation as Soviet warheads obliterated Western cities.

Today the interior strikes the visitor as a curious mix of Seventies and Eighties retro technology, bureaucratic pomposity and surreal, chilling effects such as dummies propped up in chairs. Look out for Margaret Thatcher and John Major wax dummies gracing the building. Around them, TV screens playing original “Protect and Survive” public service broadcasts are playing on continuous loop.

The videos are more chilling than any horror movie. They were only designed to be shown if a nuclear strike was deemed likely within 72 hours. If you had ever seen these programmes broadcast for real, then your own death would be virtually imminent. By this stage military planners assumed that Soviet tank armies would have overwhelmed Allied forces in a short, conventional war on the north German plain and escalation to atomic warfare would be the only remaining military option.

The films were produced in 1980 and cover the basics of survival: constructing a fall-out shelter, building an inner refuge, hoarding enough drinking water and food for two weeks. Bring a child’s teddy bear, and games, and books. Just hold on for two weeks.

The voiceover on your audio guide notes that the advice was futile. Everyone would die. The government advice was simply to minimise chaos and anarchy in the days up to the attack, as ministers and generals hurried to their deep underground prisons. Everything within at least ten miles of ground zero would be totally incinerated. Unquenchable fires would rage a further ten miles. Escape was futile even before the nuclear winter set in.

In the second level of the bunker, there is a large room from which the UK would be governed, with each grand department of state (Health, Transport) reduced to just a headboard and a couple of chairs. There are the small, dark bedrooms where the Prime Minister and his VIP entourage would have slept. On the top floor, there is the eerie military hospital including operating tables, and cardboard coffins. Finally, through the accommodation blocks (staff would have rotated on shared bunks) you pass through to the canteen.

So why is this bunker such a fearsome and evocative place? No one ever died here. The base was decommissioned at the end of the Cold War in 1994 and closed up like an old wound in the English countryside. A private farmer bought the land.

Maybe it’s because the fear of silent annihilation, of the threat of nuclear winter, has never left us and we still hear echoes in today’s news of weapons of mass destructions and terrorist threats.

Leaving the bunker is easy. You just pass through a long silver tunnel and emerge, not into a land charred and blackened by nuclear fall-out, but into the beautiful Essex forest. Fresh air has never felt so good.

(c) James Rozel 2009.This article has appeared on eZine Articles.

The bunker is located on the A128 road between Brentwood and Ongar, about thirty miles north east of central London. It is open from 10pm to 4pm in winter (5pm in Summer). Adult admission is £6.50, children £4.50 and a family group (3 adults and 2 children) costs £16.