Snippet of the week: Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker

Our weekly feature on a place Guild members have found on their travels. Tim Locke ventures to darkest Essex.

A nasty-looking 1950s bungalow in Essex woodland is the unpromising prelude to one of the strangest, most chilling places you could imagine.

Kelvedon Hatch, near Ongar, is where central government would have been based during a nuclear attack. The bungalow masks the entrance to a labyrinthine, five-storey complex that burrows 80 feet beneath the farmland.

You pick up an audio tour as you go in – there’s no one to greet you – and wander deep into the bowels of this fascinatingly uncomfortable place. The communication rooms and accommodation are all very much as they were left, even with the bedroom that John Major would have slept in.

Quite how the entire population of the bunker would have avoided going psychotic within days of entering this claustrophobic hell certainly causes one's mind to boggle somewhat.

As interesting as any medieval castle I’ve visited, Kelvedon Hatch brings home the stark realisation of what the Cold War might have been.

See www.secretnuclearbunker.com/virtual.html