Lyndon Green PR1 Repeater Bunker, Birmingham

[Riskybex]

Lyndon Green was known technically as a PR1 (protected repeater station, type 1), comprising a two-level bunker with heavy blast doors.

The bunker was built in 1953.

It is semi-sunken, with the main distribution frame and active equipment on the ground floor and power plant and ventilation system in the basement below ground.”


Lyndon Green is on one of the main trunk telephone (and television) cable routes between London and Birmingham, having a number of important circuits passing through it. It was constructed at a time when all repeaters (amplifiers) used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes), which required far more electrical power than the solid-state amplifiers of today.

 

[BikinGlynn]

One of my first explores this, remember doing it solo & going down catladder to lower floor (could only get in the rear door then so didnt know stairs were there lol) Ill admit I was bloody terrified but loved it.

 

[Hayman]

"It is semi-sunken, with the main distribution frame and active equipment on the ground floor and power plant and ventilation system in the basement below ground.”

It seems strange that the strategically necessary communication equipment
was at a higher level, and the power plant was below it. Was this because of weight considerations? Or the amount of heat thermionic valve circuits produced, and the need to dissipate that heat? Servicing the circuitry would have been much easier if it could be reached from ground-level access.

 

[HughieD]

You really are chief bunker finder general!