troglodyte
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This bunker has always been at the back of my mind since I first heard about it in 2004. Local newspapers at the time were always mentioning secret tunnels running throughout Hertford and this bunker was said to lead into them. So not only a bunker to explore but apparently an extensive set of tunnels too? Surely this was to good to be true?
The bunker in more recent years was used as government archive storage and the man in charge of the archive team had apparently told The Insider that "when you got to a certain point when going towards the Castle or town, the tunnel was bricked up with breezeblocks."
So maybe access to the secret network of tunnels was blocked off a few years back? he continued to say that "Often it is very dangerous too, On more than one occasion people have died in the process. If you attempt to enter a defence-related site, even an apparently unused one, you should expect an unpleasant encounter with military police."
It all started to seem a bit over the top, Secret tunnels, People dying, Military police? So by this point my curiosity was at boiling point!
Now 8 years later I finally get a chance to debunk all this.
I'd heard rumours the last occupants of the building above the bunker had left, So now was the time to see it.
We decided to head out at night and try our luck at finding a way in. After a lot of head scratching we eventually found our way inside.
'Only three SRHQ bunkers are of recent construction- Basingstoke, (SRHQ62), Herford (SRHQ42) and Southport (SRHQ10).
Each has the same rough design, a All two-storey concrete basement below government office blocks built in the late 1960s.
Walls are 20-30 inches thick (50-75cm) and each has its own borehole for water.
Some one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water are also stored in permanent tanks, and a generator room can power all the SRHQ's equipment for a month, with a ten thousand gallon fuel reserve.
Two sets of filters are fitted to the air-conditioning plant, one for peacetime exercise use, and the second for war.
If the level of fallout dust becomes too high, air conditioning can be switched to internal circulation for a period.
The bunkers were designed to have a radiation 'protection factor' of about 400, and to resist blast pressure of 1.5psi. In contrast, the average house is unlikely, after attack, to offer a protective factor better than 5-10.'
Quoted from 'War Plan UK, the secret truth about Britain's Civil Defence. Duncan Campbell. 1980'
Turns out they didn't just leave it completley unwatched on my second visit we set off PIR's and had to leave sharpish!
VIDEO HERE
So where's the breezeblocks, secret tunnels, military police and dead people? It goes to show not you can't trust everything you read. Although I do believe there is still something to be found running under Hertfords streets. A police officer had once told me that he had been in one of them and I recently heard from a friend that a colleague of his had been lifting manholes and discovered a tiled passage exacly where the tunnels our said to lead.
So for now they remain a mystery but atleast I have finally debunked one piece of the puzzle.
Watch this space...
