ON TOUR: Bollocks to Alton Towers
ABTN continues in its search for unusual places and offerings that perhaps are not reviewed in the Sunday papers but we think will interest readers.
”Bollocks to Alton Towers” subtitled ”50 Uncommonly British Days Out” is just about to be published by Penguin (”12.99) and is a practical review of some of the more different ways of spending a day out. http://www.penguin.co.uk
”Kelvedon Secret Nuclear Bunker” is a typical entry but one we thought might appeal to the ABTN audience.
Probably qualifying as The World”s Most Terrifying bungalow, the Secret Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon hatch is memorably chilling, and made all the more extraordinary by its very ordinary setting: on a country lane between Chipping Ongar, once the furthest outpost of the Central Line, and Brentwood, infamously and regularly crowned the most boring town in Britain.
It could be any other 1950s bungalow, were it not for its 10 feet thick concrete walls reaching 100 feet underground. The local villagers knew nothing of its purpose, clearly being the sort of people who could remain unfazed by the delivery of 40,000 tons of cement to Parrish Farm in 1952. Even the contractors weren”t told what they were building.
Twenty miles from London this is where the select few government leaders, military commanders and civil servants would have been whisked to run the southeast, or the whole country, in the event of a nuclear strike. Having presumably given a cheery wave to their colleagues and families, leaving them to perish in the scary fireball, 600 ”key personnel” or ”biggest cowards”) would have lived and worked here, with filtered air and enough supplies to last three months without venturing outside. Center Parcs used to boast that it was the ”British Holiday The Weather Can”t Spoil”. Given that you”d be safe here during a nuclear winter, Kelvedon could teach them a thing or two about all weather tourism. Walk through the front door of the bungalow, and you enter a world where the clocks strike 13. In the entrance hall, roughly where granny would have her prize aspidistra, is a steel cage and a decontamination unit. Just beyond that, where the bathroom might have been, there”s a 120m tunnel leading to a pair of 1.5 tonne tank metal blast doors. This is where some of the civil service would have slept on army-issue bunk beds and, like much of the Bunker, it has a sobering dual purpose. In this case, the bunk beds would have doubled as crushable impact protection in the event of an explosion, and the tunnel itself would have made any intruders easy targets. Anybody breaking in would have been shot dead before reaching the first line of defence.
Given that the enemy wouldn”t be in much of a hurry to visit, having reduced their conquered territory to a flat, unwelcoming, radioactive surface, you may wonder who the bunker”s residents were expecting to need to repel with force. Unfortunately, the answer is you.
It”s inescapably grisly logic. If the people you voted for ran away and hid the moment London suddenly disappeared into a cloud of atomic steam, and while you were dying, you came across them all hiding in a hill in Essex, you”d want a word with them. Sadly, they wouldn”t be able to brook any invasion from the outside world at all, friendly or otherwise (because you”re contaminated, and everyone in the Bunker isn”t because it”s under constant positive air pressure). So they would kill you just in case. Cheer up. You were going to die soon anyway, remember?
The whole place is a grim exercise in the art of belt and braces. Everything has been thought of, planned for and backed up. The tunnel, which has two L-bends in it for extra blast protection leads into the bottom of the hillside that houses the enormous three-storey Regional Government Headquarters (RGHQ). The first, and lowest level, the most secure from attack, houses the enormous plant and communications network. All the life support systems ” electricity, water, air ” have duplicates. Beyond this is the communications centre, including a BBC studio to transmit to the smoking remains of the nation in the event of every other piece of specialist equipment failing.
Upstairs, there”s a planning room, from where aircraft and nuclear fallout would have been tracked. There”s a huge mess kitchen and canteen, washrooms, desk space for representatives from every level of government, and dormitories. The Prime Minister”s dorm is helpfully occupied by a John Major dummy, implying that it may be worth keeping an eye on the ex-PM, since he still has a safe place reserved if he accidentally triggers World War 3 with some strongly worded cricketing journalism. There”s also a sick bay and a mortuary. (Corpses, in case you were wondering, would eventually have been double-bagged and left outside in the fall-out, doubtless to be picked up by marauding bands of mutant undertakers and dealt with appropriately).
Today, you can visit Kelvedon and see exactly what was planned for the chosen few had the nuclear balloon gone up. Handled wrongly as a tourist attraction, the Bunker would be ”End of the World, the Worst Case Scenario Theme Park”. Happily, it”s been handled beautifully and owner Mike Parrish has done little more than throw open the doors. The rest speaks for itself in hushed, sinister Cold War tones.
The bunker was decommissioned in 1992, when the Parrish family bought back the land for an undisclosed sum. Presumably the powers that be have a bigger and better bolt-hole now. And presumably we”ll be able to visit that by 2032.
Happily Kelvedon was never put onto red alert during its active life, but as a final sobering thought, it went on amber status just once in 40 years ” not during the Cuban missile crisis, or the occupation of the Palestinian territories, or the invasion of Afghanistan, but during the 1984-85 miners” strike, when the British government was concerned that the country might be on the brink of civil war. Makes you proud, doesn”t” it?
Kelvedon Hall Lane, Brentwood, Essex CM14 5TL
http://www.japar.demon.co.uk