This was a pre-arranged visit via Woking borough council as the bunker is under the live civic offices. Please do not attempt to visit without permission.
History and plan drawings by Edward Combes.
Woking Borough Council relocated to their current building in the early 1980's. As was the norm for the time the Home Office required regional County and Borough Councils to make preparations for Continuance of Government and Civil Defence/Protection by building Radiation Proof Shelters that would act as emergency control points.
The Bunker was commissioned in 1982 in the basement of the new building and the building and the bunker were designed by a Mr Roy Freeland ( who we met and quizzed on bunker design) and the bunker was constructed by a company called Waites using designs and ideas heavily copied from the Swiss. On a side note Woking BC only recieved a pittance from the government for building it which was highly unusual at the time with many councils recieving between 75% and 100% funds for bunker building. The bunker is in the basement of the modern building and is a somewhat unusual shape as it has been 'fitted in' with the rest of the design of the building
The bunker was never designed to be a Blast proof bunker but more of a fallout proof shelter - to this end it was equipped with only 1 blast door and none of the usual dog leg corridors etc etc so commonly found. It was to be manned by 30 people who would stay in the bunker at all times during a crisis, there was a small kitchennette, dormitory (ehich operated a hot bed system), shower room, radio room, a lister 100kVa emergency generator and Luwa 100% air filtration plant as well as the main ops room. Interestingly there was no emergency exit and the main blast door opened outwards. In the event of the main building collapsing you would in effect be trapped in the bunker. The reasons for this were that the emergency escape tunnel would have been difficult to build and that the door is better opening outwards as it provides better protection against blast the argument was that once you were past the blast door there were 2 seperate ways out the building from there.
The bunker was never meant to be immediately ready to go but rather was a dual role area, mainly used for storage of furniture (the blast door says furniture store on it!) with the idea being that nuclear war would build up over a period of days or weeks which would enable the bunker to be cleared out, stocked and made operational.
The bunker fell into disuse slowly and is now used purely as a store area, the decontamination shower, generator and air filtration plant are all decommisioned - however all the radio kit reamins intact and in working order.
Woking Civic Centre Offices still act as the central emergency planning control but their focus is solely on civil and natural emergencies such as flooding.
