York Cold War Bunker
For this exercise I have tried to choose a location that had some history and or connection to where I live, and also something that was unusual and interesting. After researching several places of interest I came across York Cold war Bunker. The site is now owned and managed by English Heritage, I have driven within a few hundred yards of this building for many years and never knew it even existed.
The York Cold War Bunker is a two-storey semi-subterranean Cold War bunker in the Holgate area of York, England, built in 1961 to monitor nuclear explosions and fallout in Yorkshire in the event of nuclear war.
One of about 30 around the UK and Northern Ireland, the building was used throughout its operational existence as the regional headquarters and control centre for the Royal Observer Corps's No. 20 Group YORK between 1961 and 1991.
During its Cold War operational period the building could have supported 60 local volunteer members of the Royal Observer Corps inclusive of a ten man United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation scientific warning team. They would have collated details of nuclear bombs exploded within the UK and tracked radioactive fallout across the Yorkshire region, warning the public of its approach. This example of an ROC control building is the only one that is preserved in its operational condition. The others stand derelict or have either been demolished or sold. A few have been converted to other uses like No. 16 Group Shrewsbury that is now a vetinerary clinic, another is a recording studio, two are satellite and communications control centres and one is a solicitor's file storage facility.
The fully restored building contains air filtration and generating plant, kitchen and canteen, dormitories, radio and landline communication equipment and specialist 1980s computers and a fully equipped operations room with vertical illuminated perspex maps.
The bunker is a rectangular three-story structure built into a slope using the 'cut and cover' technique (a pit is dug, the structure built then covered over). The underground parts were waterproofed, once complete it was covered with earth at least 3ft deep to increase protection against blast and heat, and to lessen the effects of penetrating radiation.
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| Entrance to the Bunker |
Aerosol Filter Chamber
This room contains two banks of gas, or particulate, filters that would have removed any microscopic radioactive particles in the air drawn into the structure during 'filtration' mode. The filters could not be cleaned or replaced when saturated. After a nuclear attack 'Filtration' mode would have been used sparingly, as the filter banks would have become congested. The rate of congestion depended on the size of the indrawn radioactive particles.
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| Aerosol Filter Chamber |
Radiator Room
The radiator room houses the cooling fan and radiator of the stand-by diesel generator in the plant room below. It also contains two carbon dioxide fire-extinguishers. Air vents in the eastern and southern wall have louvred steel shutters that would have closed automatically had a blast wave occurred. The room, rendered radioactive by the blast, would have been shut off by the timber door with its rubber gas seal.
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| Radiator Room |
Plant Room
The room is largely taken up with air conditioning equipment, which could be operated in several modes. It was essential to be able to cool air drawn into the bunker, as in a nuclear situation external air temperatures could be very high. In a chamber at the rear of the plant room is a stand-by generator, which would start automatically if mains power was lost. Fuel for continuous running over 40 days was stored in an external underground tank, but use of the generator for any length of time would have affected air quality in the bunker.
If fallout was anticipated, the bunker functioned in a similar manner to a submarine: it was closed up and the air inside recirculated for as long as possible before a gulp of fresh air was drawn in through the Aerosol filter chamber.
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| Plant Room |
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| Plant Room |
Operations room
At the heart of the bunker over both the mid and lower levels was the Operations room, with its associated radio, teleprinter and telephone exchange rooms. Here the information received from the observation posts was plotted and displayed, so that the damage and fallout levels could be assessed and warning given to the civil authorities, military and public.
Incoming data was written on the post-display boards. At five minute intervals the boards would be rotated, displaying the information to the operations room, while being updated on the reverse.
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| Operations room |
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| Operations room |
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| Operations room |
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| Operations room |
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| Operations room |
At the center of the lower level(the well) of the operations room is the command table at which the senior warning officers sat. The plotters, who received information from the outlying monitoring posts, sat in the gallery in a row behind a desk fitted with rotating Perspex display boards on which they wrote the information with china-graph pens.
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| Operations room |
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| Operations room |
Officers room
The officers room was used by the commandant and his deputy. There were only ever three to five full time staff employed by the Home Office at each of the ROC group headquarters. The fittings in the room were basic, a wooden bench, a radio shelf, a coat rack and a small wall safe. The charts on the wall were used to administer the running of the headquarters and the various monitoring posts dotted around the group area.
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| Officers room |
Dormitories
The bunker was manned by 50-60 ROC volunteers, BT engineers, and Home Office scientists. The volunteers were split into three crews and were expected to operate in a nuclear environment for at least two weeks. Two dormitories provided accommodation. The larger of the two was usually occupied by female staff, while the smaller was used for the men.
This necessitated a hot bed system, where crew members took beds as they became available. Personal possessions could only be stored in suitcases and bags on shelves above the beds.
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| Dormitories |
