Places features

As unusual signs go, the brown one directing people towards the 'Secret Nuclear Bunker' at Kelvedon Hatch, is often highlighted.

The mysterious 120-yard tunnel into the bunker

But whilst it was once an integral part of Britain's covert Cold War strategy, the underground bunker to the north of Brentwood is now one of Essex's most successful tourist attractions.

Built on farmland in the aftermath of World War Two, as tensions between the West and communist Russia heightened, the three-storey bunker was built to house approximately 600 people behind its thick brass doors for up to three months in the aftermath a possible nuclear attack.

The bunker has three underground levels

The bunker included its own BBC radio studio, infirmary, war rooms and dormitories for the chosen people would have been taken from the civil service, government, the medical profession and media, in order to keep the country operating during dark times.

To save its limited water resources, people would have worn disposable white uniforms, so as to not waste water on washing.

During it's 30-plus years on stand-by, very few local people knew of its existence, having been told the earthworks were for an underwater reservoir. Above ground, its entrance via a bungalow alluded to nothing more than a farm building.

Rather than allow it to become consigned to the pages of history, the Parrish family, who had farmed the land around the bunker whilst it was in operation, took it over and opened it up to the public two years later.

Michael Parrish recalls with wonder the first time he entered the 120-yard-long tunnel entrance.

"I was expecting it to be dark, dank and dripping with stalagmites and it wasn't," he remembers. "It was bright, it was airy, it was glistening - it was quite amazing."

"It was glistening like ice, because the guards had nothing to do except spit and polish all the time and the lino was just glistening."

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