That bunker must be Scotland’s worst-kept secret. It is signposted all over a huge area of the south-east of the country, presumably because, being right in the middle of nowhere, it would otherwise be quite difficult to find (and that probably was part of the original idea).
It’s actually worth visiting if you’re into Cold War history. The interior is a weird hodge-podge of stuff that is to do with the actual bunker and its use and other stuff that just seems sort-of interesting to military buffs (yes, we’re pretty sure the bunker occupants would have defended themselves with the WWII-era Soviet machine pistol on display in the bunker’s “armoury”). If they could find a cannon from the Battle of Trafalgar they would probably put it in there just because they could. But the site itself is really kinda amazing in a morbid way; who, having diligently charted all the impacts of nuclear warheads from the relative safety of the bunker, would want to sit in the thing for years waiting for the radioactivity up top to subside, in order to emerge to find … what exactly?
Ahh. Golden Memories of Humphrey Lyttelton on “I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue”, recorded at Hastings: “Actually, the battle of Hastings was not fought at Hastings, but at a nearby village called ‘Battle’. What were the odds of that?”.
More scary are the various Royal Observer Corps bunkers that are scattered across the UK.
They’re basically a single small room, and a toilet, and their purpose was to report on nuclear bombs going off over the UK (range, direction, estimated size of blast etc.).
Unlike the bigger bunkers, they were barely hardened, and only had enough food and water for a week or two at most. Their whole purpose was to observe the bombs going off, and after that, they, and their crews, were of no further use.
(It’s amusing to look at the difference in scale of an observation post:
verses a Titian II silo in the US:
I lived by that station for about 17 years of my life, it was a weird gut punch seeing the sign having been nicked. I know they’ll replace it but I feel inexplicably sentimental for it, like it’s the head of Jebediah Springfield. I just checked the listing and it appears one of Battle’s neighbours in Hailsham bought it up for £142.
I used to get the train most days to go to college and would internally shout “Battle station!” when I passed it then giggle to myself. Another good one is further into Battle we had a sign pointing up a road that said “Battle Golf Club” so I liked to think that it was just a room with a glass cabinet with single old golf club inside (I never confirmed this, I didn’t want my imagination shattered).
Who knows. Battle golf may yet turn out to be a fun game.
like Urban Golf, but in war zones?
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