The Burnt Bunker

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. I never break in a place, I never take any items and I never cause any damage. I will not disclose a location, or means of entry. I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building.)

I've blogged about quite a lot of these little monitoring bunkers now and for me, at least, they never get old. However, they probably would if I focused entirely on hunting them down instead of just swinging by whenever I happened to be in the area. It's such a gamble. They might be padlocked, they might be welded shut, or they might not even be there at all. It's on a comparative rare occasion that they're just left to rot, wide open for anyone to access, but truthfully all these outcomes are annoying. If I owned land that the government had put a bunker in decades ago and then abandoned, I'd fix it up and put it on Airbnb, along with a sinister advert "For all the Thora Birches out there, come kill the Keira Knightleys of your choice in my wonderful hole. £20 a night, roughly ten miles from civilisation. All authentic cold war bunk beds."

So basically, for those who haven't read my other bunker blogs, they look like this, although the access hatch is usually not broken.

In the 1960s, with tensions rising between various countries, and nobody knowing quite what to do about the sudden presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of our potential enemies, the governments of the world collectively went "AAAAAAHHHH!!!!" and began looking at things to do to either lessen the threat or at the very least make it look like they had a plan.
In the UK, nuclear monitoring bunkers were established all over the countryside, roughly ten miles apart. Each one was a tiny subterranean room, about fifteen feet underground, where the staff would monitor for nuclear blasts, and communicate with other monitoring posts. These were also designed to keep the staff safe and provide accomodation in the event of a nuclear strike, and in some of these bunkers, I've found instruction booklets on how to build cooking equipment out of rubble in a post-apocalypse wasteland and how to build traps to catch wild animals, (although other humans will do if you're against animal cruelty.)
In short, in the event of the apocalypse, call me.

This particular bunker was established in 1964 and was one of the first to close down, being left in 1968. Many others, particularly the ones that are in good condition, closed in 1990. I didn't have high hopes for this place, given that it had been sitting open in a field, without any maintenance, since 1964. The only way in and out was a fifteen foot ladder into a concrete room with no phone signal to call for help, should it break. Only a fool would climb down there.

And as established, my survival instinct is covered in dust and cobwebs. This is why I sometimes end up sat on the roof of a college, looking at my hand and thinking "What just happened, and why does my body think bleeding is an appropriate response?"

So here we are at the bottom of the ladder. The beauty of these bunkers is that even though they were built identical, history has given them each a different story, so I never know exactly what to expect beyond the original layout.
At the bottom of the ladder is a pump used to remove flood water, although in this case it's deteriorated quite rapidly.

It looks like someone has, at some point, set fire to the bunker. However its furniture is mostly still intact. It still has bunk beds, and a cupboard.

The door has been removed and propped up against the wall for some reason.

There's a suspiciously modern looking Carling can sitting on the desk, indicative that visitors have been coming here since 1968, and since the fire. This doesn't surprise me though. I'm far, far, from the only person who knows about these places.

There appears to be a tree branch in the toilet room. The toilets of these bunkers tend to be rather undignified, being a bucket with a seat. Presumably when full, someone had to then lug it up the ladder, and dispose of it, before bringing it back down. But look at this tiny bunker, with just two beds, and imagine what life would be like if you were stationed here in the event of a nuclear strike. There's two of you, down here and unable to leave for an undetermined length of time, with this bucket lurking in the corner, filled with your digested food rations. You better hope you actually like the person you're working with!

But it's still nicer than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

Fortunately there are air vents, which are designed to open and shut. However with the air filled with nuclear fallout, maybe one is better off inhaling the stale air of the bunker, excrement and all.

We found, quite oddly, that the bunker had become home to a colony of snails. There were literally hundreds of them dotted around, adhering to walls, under the desk, or just chilling on the floor. I guess the bunker is a perfect breeding ground.

That's all I got today. It's just a small blog, however in case you missed yesterdays post on the Shropshire blog, I'll link that here. To conclude, these nuclear monitoring bunkers are sad decaying relics of a more tense era, where nuclear war seemed inevitable. It's a shame that so many are rotting away in fields when they could be preserved as historic testaments, and in my opinion the real crime is that one must trespass in order to appreciate them.
My next blog will be a lunatic asylum, and then it will be a quirky derelict underground hair salon. Such diverse topics! In the meantime, Like my Facebook, Follow my Instagram, Subscribe to my Youtube and Follow my Twitter.

Thanks for reading!