Second World War Secret Bunkers is a detailed photographic record of all the major underground sites developed in great secrecy by the British government and military establishment in preparation for the Second World War. Many of these sites were enormous in extent (some encompassing upwards of 100 acres of underground space) and often 100 feet or more below the surface.

Sites illustrated in the book include the vast Corsham network in North Wiltshire: the army ammunition depots at Monkton Farleigh, Eastlays, Ridge and Tunnel Quarry (which had its own underground railway station linked to the Bristol to London main line); the Spring Quarry underground aircraft engine factory - reputedly the largest underground factory in the world; Copenacre and a whole series of other Admiralty stores in North Wiltshire, and the museum repository at Westwood which housed all the treasures from the British Museum, the V&A and some forty other London museums and Galleries.

Also included are the series of ill-fated RAF underground bomb stores at Llanberis, Harpur Hill, Chilmark and Fauld in Staffordshire which exploded in 1944 with catastrophic consequences. Amongst the other sites described and illustrated are the National Gallery's secret repository at Manod quarry, high in the Snowdon mountains; underground factories at Drakelow near Kidderminster, Longbridge in Birmingham, and Westwood near Bradford-on-Avon; subterannean naval weapons stores in South Wiltshire and West Wales and the highly secret underground chemical weapons storage tunnels at Rhydymwn near Mold.

Illustrated with approximately 400 colour and B&W archive photo's along with original engineers drawings and plans. Many of the archive photographs originate from the collection of the late F.W. Allan, who was chief engineer in charge of construction of most of these sites on behalf of the Ministry of Works and who commissioned them between 1936 and the late 1960s as a permanent record of the work undertaken.

Gaining access to many of these sites in recent years to obtain contemporary photographs has frequently proved both physically and administratively tortuous.

From the Publisher

This large-format, high-quality and lavishly illustrated book is the second in a series of three volumes that comprise our 'Subterannean Britain' series. Volume three describes the vast array of underground nuclear bunkers constructed in Britain during the cold-war, many of them being adaptations of the existing Second World War infrastructure illustrated in the current volume. Volume one illustrates the mines, quarries and other underground sites and the industries they supported prior to their requisition and conversion in the mid-1930s for military and other government purposes.

Cold War Bunkers is the third volume in a series of high-quality photographic records of Britain's underground heritage. Other volumes in the series cover the wide range of underground structures built during an in preparation for the Second World War, and also the surviving relics of the world-famous subterranean stone quarries of the Bath and Corsham areas of the West of England.

Each of the large-format volumes contains approximately 450 colour and B&W archive photographs accompanied by comprehensive captions, an authoritative text and, when neccessary, supporting maps, plans and diagrams.
In many instances Nick Catford has been granted unprecedented access to many highly sensitive sites in order to compile the collection of photographs reproduced in this book.

From the Publisher

Cold War Bunkers is a comprehensive photographic overview of all the underground, semi-underground and surface-built cold-war atomic and nuclear bunkers built in the British Isles to protect central, regional and local government, military organizations, the Civil Defence organization, the Royal Observer Corps, UKWMO and the public utilities against nuclear attack by the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1989.

Amongst the sites represented in this volume are:
the Corsham Central Government War Headquarters (Burlington); the Regional War Rooms built during the early 1950s and the network of Civil Defence bunkers that supported them; the Regional Seats of Government (RSGs) of the 1960s, the SRHQs that were built at the end of that decade and into the 1970s, and the highly sophisticated and hugely expensive Regional Government Headquarters of the 1980s.

Also covered are the huge range of ROC bunkers from the very large Sector Controls to the tiny 3-man observation posts; the often complex and sometimes Spartan County and District council bunkers, bunkers built by the water companies, and the deep underground emergency telephone exchanges built by the GPO and BT.

The book also goes in great detail into the underground radar control rooms established as part of the RAF's 'Rotor' radar system and also the hardened anti-aircraft gun control rooms which were integrated with 'Rotor' in the early 1950s.

Coverage is also given to the cruise missile site at Greenham Common along with many other sites and structures too numerous to mention.

...the third volume covering the history of the Bath and Corsham stone quarries up until the start of the Second World War will follow shortly.