CORSHAM - THE EMERGENCY GOVERNMENT WAR HEADQUARTERS
Just after the start of WW2, Spring Quarry, a disused stone quarry 100
feet underground below Corsham in north Wiltshire was converted into the
largest underground factory in the world, making aircraft engines for
the Bristol Aeroplane Company. In 1956 the abandoned factory was acquired
by the Cabinet Office and over the next five years was converted into
'Burlington' the Emergency Government War Headquarters. Spread across
an amazing two million square feet of underground space, the HQ is, in
effect, Whitehall in microcosm, and is where the government would scuttle-off
to at the outbreak of nuclear war. At its peak the HQ would have housed
over 5000 Civil Servants together with the Prime Minister and his entourage,
a host of Cabinet Ministers, the Chiefs of Defence Staff and their advisors
etc.
Access
to the EGWHQ is via a series of lifts and escalators, the latter requisitioned
from St Pauls and Holborn tube stations during the war (for use in the
underground factory) and adapted for the War Headquarters in the 1950s.
Underground, huge blast doors guard emergency fire exits into the surrounding
quarries.
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For more information about the wartime history of the Corsham Quarries, try SECRET UNDERGROUND CITIES |
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