Underground range of rooms. In use until late post-war period as a control centre. Rear of car park, Municipal Buildings, Napier Road. (1)

The bunker is an underground 18 m. x 17 m concrete box, having 30-cm.-thick walls and a 45 cm.–thick roof, both presumably steel-reinforced. Covering the roof is about 20cm of tarmac, which forms the surface of the former council car park.

The bunker appears to have been completed by mid-1954. Reached down a staircase, and through an airlock against the admission of radioactive fallout or chemical weapon particles, it consisted of 11 rooms for communications, command and control, with power plant to keep the lighting and ventilation working in the event of a power cut. There was also a small kitchen and toilets. It was fully furnished and equipped with telephone cubicles, desks and chairs in the Message Room and in the two control rooms, with chairs and tables in the Liaison Officers’ and Visitors’ and Messengers’ Rooms. Within the plant room was an electric generator with motors to draw air in through filters from the outside and to circulate this through ducting to the various rooms.

It was taken out of service in 1967 but was maintained. It was renovated in the 1980s in light of perceived new threat but again fell into disuse with changing government priorities and funding in response to changing global situations. (2)

<1> Victor Smith and Ron Crowdy, Thames Gateway Assesment: Gazetteer of Defence Sites (Index). SKE6445.

<2> Victor Smith, 2010, The Cold War Civil Defence Control Centre, Canterbury Street, Gillingham, Kent: An historic building survey (Unpublished document). SKE16726.