A brief bit of Drakelow history:

Drakelow Tunnels is moving forward to open to the public as a Cold War museum. The complex was first constructed as a Shadow Factory for the Austin Rover company in 1939 on the breakout of WWII and was meant (and used) for Rover workers to make aero engine parts for the Bristol Hercules and Bristol Pegasus Engine. The complex was used by 700 workers during the war from 7.30am until 5pm every day bar weekends.

After WWII the complex was taken over by the Air Ministry and used as a Regional Seat of Government and later a Regional Government Headquarters that would have played a regional government role in case of nuclear war had resulted with Russia.

Since 2010, a group of volunteers have been spending thousands of hours worth of time and effort maintaining the tunnels and renovating them. We aim to restore the nuclear side (about a 3rd of the total 285,000sqft complex area) of the complex into a museum where people young and old can come and visit and see how it has evolved from WWII through to the Cold War.

We have however come up against thieves breaking in and cutting our electrics to the national grid. This has meant we have had to use the 2 diesel generators to supply us with electricity, although we are now on to our last generator after more thieves cut the radiator to the 2nd generator meaning it ceased up.

To get the electrics up and running again, we have to dig a trench out of the bunker, along the access road, under the highway and into a farmers field, this all costs money, let alone the reconnection cost, so it is going to cost us around £70,000.

Once this has been completed, our dehumidifier unit can run 24/7 and we can rebuild structures without them going mouldy!!

Please see our renovation facebook page here for recent work party updates: https://www.facebook.com/SaveDrakelow/