Secret Underground Cities: an Account of Some of Britain's Subterranean Defence, Factory and Storage Sites in the Second World War: Amazon.co.uk: N.J. McCamley: Books

Product Description

The original hardcover edition of Secret Underground Cities was snapped up by the British public, and very few copies made it to the United States. Built by combining three existing mines in the West Country, the British Arsenal at Corsham was eventually to become a complete underground city, with its own air conditioning plants and three power-stations to provide electricity for the 100,000 lights that lit its many corridors. It eventually housed 300,000 tons of ammunition. Built in response to the first air raids of World War I, the facility was completed in time for use during World War II.

Britain's Board of Ordnance maintained a fanatical level of security around the facility for over 40 years after World War II ended, and McCanley's book is the first detailed study of the project, utilizing official records and recently unearthed photographs. McCamley's intriguing text cuts through decades of rumor and speculation to reveal the elaborate means used to camouflage the site during the war, several near-disasters, and a plan to touch off the hidden reserves of ammunition in 1940 to prevent them from falling into German hands, an explosion which would have rivaled the atomic bomb.

From the Author

Describes the major, WW2 UK government underground works
SECRET UNDERGROUND CITIES’ is the history of the series of vast underground arsenals, factories and control bunkers built by the British government during the Second World War, and of the new uses found for many of these subterranean cities as nuclear shelters and command centres during the period of post-war, cold-war paranoia.

Many of these underground sites were concentrated in the Corsham area of North Wiltshire, where hundreds of acres of disused stone mines, buried over 100’ below the peaceful rural landscape, were converted at the cost of tens of millions of pounds, into huge and awesome bomb-proof cities.

After an introduction explaining the inter-war military, economic and political factors that influenced the government’s policy on underground protection, the book goes on describe in detail the construction and operation of all the major sites including: (1) CENTRAL AMMUNITION DEPOT CORSHAM (Tunnel Quarry, Monkton Farleigh Quarry, and the Ridge/Eastlays underground complex)

(2) The two-million square foot SPRING QUARRY underground aircraft engine factory at Corsham, and the other smaller but similar sites at DRAKELOW, WARREN ROW, WESTWOOD and DUDLEY

(3) The sinister and secret underground repositories built to house the contents of the National Gallery at MONOD, in the bleak mountains to the North of Ffestiniog, and the deep stone quarry at WESTWOOD in Wiltshire that housed the greatest treasures of the V&A and the British Museum.

(4) The underground headquarters built in BROWNS QUARRY (later known as RAF RUDLOE MANOR) to house the headquarters of No.10 Group, Fighter Command. This later became the hub of the Western sector of the ‘Rotor’ radar system, and later still became of pivotal importance in the government’s system of nuclear war headquarters.

(5) Amongst the other WW2 sites covered are the RAF storage depots at FAULD, HARPUR HILL and CHILMARK as well as the Admiralty and MoS depots at COPENACRE, MONKS PARK, HAYES WOOD (Limpley Stoke) etc.

The final section of the book describes in some detail how, in the 1960’s, the underground factories at Drakelow and Warren Row were converted into Regional Seats of Government for use in event of nuclear war. It also describes how Spring Quarry at Corsham became the National Government War Headquarters, (the fabled city of Burlington), from where the government would launch any retaliatory nuclear attack, and which would become the home of the War Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff Committee, together with some 5,000 Civil Servants.

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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

Fascinating look at underground military installations 24 Sep 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have to admit I have more than a passing interest in the book's subject matter; I visited the vast underground installations in Wiltshire when I was in the military. The site of an underground railway station was quite impressive. The author gives us the history of the tunnels and some maps, although they are not particularly detailed. More recent photos would have been interesting. Worth buying, especialy if you live in the area and wondered what on earth (or under it) was going on under the rolling hills outside Bath.

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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

Excellent! has put straight many previous misconceptions 10 Feb 2002

A comprehensive history of Britain's underground military / industrial infrastructure of WW2, with the mass of detailed historical fact pierced by the occassional shaft of dry humour. Very readable. This book put straight many of my previous misconceptions about the infamous 'Corsham Complex' and revealed new sites in the Midlands and Wales about which I was previously unaware.
A little more on the underground RAF bomb-depots would perhaps have been welcome, along with details of the 'sinister' mustard gas factory at Rhydymwn, which, tantalyzingly, gets just a passing mention.
Overall though, a gem squeezed into 270 pages.

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