Southampton Civil Defence Bunker
| The visit to this bunker was organized by Keith Ward and attended by 15 Subbrit members. The bunker is now in the back garden of a private house in Somerset Avenue in Southampton, it is not visible from the road and the owner would not welcome casual visitors. The photo above shows how well hidden the bunker is and in fact the owner was unaware the bunker was even there until the site came up for sale. |
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The bunker is a single store surface blockhouse which was
built and opened in 1955, it was last used as an active bunker in 1968.
Internally the bunker is in very good condition, there is power
throughout the bunker though the owner does not have all of it turned
on. In the operations room the floor has cracked quite badly but other
than that it is in remarkably good condition.
As you can see from the picture on the left all the internal doors still have the room designation on them so it was easy for us to work out what they were used for, at the main entrance there is an air lock with two wooden doors with their rubber seals. Written on the outer of the two doors is the message "Air lock doors to be kept shut when ventilation plant is working" |
| Once you have passed through them you turn left and come
to the main part of the bunker, on your right is the plant room, the
generator has been removed but a lot of the other equipment is still
there and in good condition. Further on into the bunker is a small
pantry with a lot of the original equipment still in place.
The next two rooms are the male and female dormitory's, the male dormitory is on the left and the female dormitory on the right. (The female dorm is small than the male dorm). There are two escape hatches in the bunker, one in the male dormitory and the other in the operations room. |
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Both the escape hatches lead to vertical ladders onto the
roof, (due to break-in's both these hatches have been welded shut).
Continuing to work your way around the wall, the next two rooms are the
male and female toilets, again these are both in good condition with
cubicles, sinks and water heaters in place.
The last two rooms you come to are the operations room and the communications room in that order. The ops room is the largest of the two rooms, the room is mainly empty apart from one large map which is in a bad condition and two black boards. |
| The black boards are head "Locations Board" and
"Resource Board". These are in quite good condition but do
show signs that they were used for something else before hand. As I said
before there is also an emergency exist in the corner behind a small red
gas tight door.
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In the communications room the telephone booths are still in place, there is also a message placing window between the comms room and ops room. |
| For a bunker that has not been active since 1968 it is in
remarkably good condition and very dry, only a few rooms are used by the
owner and the rest of the bunker is mainly empty. Again the Owner would
Not Welcome casual visitors.
There is a more detailed report on this bunker including a detailed history of the bunkers use on the Subbrit website. |
