For sale: Britain’s underground city

WELCOME to Cold War City (population: 4). It covers 240 acres and has 60 miles of roads and its own railway station. It even includes a pub called the Rose and Crown. The most underpopulated town in Britain is being put on the market. But there will be no estate agent’s blurb extolling the marvellous views of the town for sale: true, it has a Wiltshire address, but it is 120ft underground.

The subterranean complex that was built in the 1950s to house the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan’s cabinet and 4,000 civil servants in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack is being thrown open to commercial use. Just four maintenance men are left.

Property developers looking for the ultimate place to get away from it all need not apply. The site has a notional value of £5m but there is a catch. It is available only as part of a private finance initiative that involves investing in the military base on the surface above.

Already two uses are being considered: a massive data store for City firms or the biggest wine cellar in Europe. More outlandish ideas put forward include a nightclub for rave parties, a 1950s theme park or a reception centre for asylum seekers. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has ruled out any suggestion of using it to store nuclear waste or providing open public access because of the dangers that still lurk below.

The bunker is in a former mine near Corsham in Wiltshire where stone was once excavated to provide the fascias for the fine houses of Bath, about eight miles away.

During the war the mine was a munitions dump and a factory for military aircraft engines. It was equipped with what was then the second largest telephone exchange in Britain and a BBC studio from where the prime minister could make broadcasts to what remained of the nation. The telephone directories were last updated in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down.

A system of underground power stations would have provided electricity to the 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modelled on the Red Lion in Whitehall.

A spur line was built inside a tunnel on the main London to Bristol railway, linking it to the bunker. It was meant as an escape route for the royal family to flee London in the event of an attack.

Code-named Burlington, it was never used and as the timescale for a perceived Soviet nuclear onslaught shrank to the notorious four-minute warning of armageddon, the whole concept of evacuating the Queen and her government became obsolete.

The bunker’s very existence was meant to be top secret until it was decommissioned last year. The last cabinet records were removed a decade ago.

A visit there today involves walking into an opening in a hillside and taking a lift down to the bunker. The only sentry is a garden gnome outside one of the entrances. Inside, it is like stepping back 50 years.

Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked. There are boxes of government-issue glass ashtrays, lavatory brushes and civil service tea sets.

Pictures of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly are pinned to the walls. The canteen has murals of British sporting scenes painted by Olga Lehmann who went on to design costumes for films such as The Guns of Navarone and Kidnapped.

“It was like a set from The Avengers,” said Nick McCamley, author of Secret Underground Cities, who lived locally and first discovered the existence of the site in the 1960s.

Wing Commander Steve Röver-Parks, who is in charge of the Defence Communication Services Agency, which employs 2,200 service and civilian staff above ground at the site, said: “The MoD is in discussion with several interested parties but nothing has been signed and sealed.

“The mine will be part of a private finance initiative. Whoever gets the buildings above ground will have the rights to the mine. Wine storage is under consideration.”

Wine should keep well at the bunker’s constant temperature once equipment to control the humidity is introduced. Vintners expect an explosion in the sale of fine wines next year when changes in pension regulations will enable people to invest their savings in claret.

Michael Lainas, managing director of Octavian, which stores 800,000 cases of wine in another former stone quarry — three miles from the bunker — which the company bought from the MoD, said: “It’s a nice idea going from a red scare to red wine. Our most valuable deposit is a 1666 bottle of sherry valued at £36,000 that once belonged to the tsar of Russia. But even I am not allowed down there with a corkscrew.”

They should not sell it but open it up for the far leftist loonies to have a proper place to habitat.

How so?

Because people on the right (Tories in the UK) are most like the American achievers (Republicans). They work hard, invest wisely and eventually have a good chance with a successful business. While sticking to good old fashioned family values and making sure their children have a proper education, they help to ensure the continued success of their country.

Heck whenever I see Tories on SKY NEWS TV they even look and sound like intelligent American Republicans. I was most impressed by the way they handled the Iraq issues with being in the opposition. They were very calm, composed, dignified and never sought to tear their country down over it. Unlike the LibIdiots in America and how Labor (the UK left) would have acted if they were the shadow government (opposition). Which goes to prove that one simply can't feint "politics" as an acceptable defense as to how treasonous the Democraps have truly become with their horrible way of politicizing the War on Terror and Iraq.

The Loony Left is the exact opposite, both in the UK and US. They are generally lazy and dim witted. They don't apply themselves and don't like to work, thus they are mostly unemployable (there are still some jobs that can be found for them like collecting garbage, but I for one never trust them with food). They chucked religion and thus have no meaningful moral compass, which is why they talk ignorant gibberish on all major political issues (how else can you defend Saddam Hussein's regime, insisting he was "no threat" and treat abortion like it was birth control).

A poll in recent years showed this:

In a benchmark survey last year, the Pew Research Center found that the ranks of self-identified Democrats include:

- 36 percent of those with less than a high school education, the most solidly Democratic group by education.

- 39 percent of those making less than $20,000 a year, the most Democratic income group.

So these are the traits that mainly attract people to the right or left in politics. Republicans/Tories are everything good about the human spirit and endeavor on this planet and the Democrats/Labor are the losers end of the spectrum, the chaff of humanity, with few exceptions.

Obviously nations and humanity on the whole would be better served if we could separate the two. Just think what a wonderful world it could be if the good were not constantly spending resources on the bad. If we could make large enough places for these social failures to collect themselves to such as this underground then we could get them out of our hair. Heck the left even call their so-called culture "underground". They are the ones who should actually be demanding this space.

So we get them down there, rent free and shafts for disposed food and once in a while give them a flush of water to keep the stench down. And if at any time one gets the gumption to leave the underground they could. The beauty of the system would be that it's voluntary, thus sustainable. I for one will not be surprised how many race down there on opening day. It would be a stampede.

Then we win, they win, it's win-win situation. We are allowed to live unimpeded by their constant drag on hard worked for resources and they can wallow around in the filth and do nothing all day. This could be a test and if it works well enough then we can open the sewers in America.

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