by Luke Bennett
Wright, Patrick. 1985. On Living in an Old Country. London: Verso.
Chapter 12
Preserving and Managing York Cold War Bunker
Authenticity, Curation and the Visitor Experience
Rachael Bowers and Kevin Booth
ROC 20 Group Headquarters stands as a functional, anonymous concrete structure behind a high-security fence within a quiet residential area of York (Figure 12.1), some distance from the city’s concentration of heritage tourist attractions. In 2006 the headquarters, re-branded as ‘York’s Cold War Bunker’, opened as the most modern of English Heritage’s portfolio of over 400 historic properties. The building, with its austere mass and unprepossessing surroundings, is not an obviously welcoming place. Yet in spite of the many obstacles to providing access – both physical and intellectual – English Heritage chose to restore it and open it to the general public.
This chapter details the bunker’s transformation from a desolate building with an uncertain future to a heritage attraction. Written by the curator responsible for its initial presentation and its first site manager, responsible for interpreting and opening it to the public, this account reflects upon the process of recognition and preservation that prepared the way for visitors and discusses the challenges of curating such a modern heritage asset: the difficulties of balancing conservation with access; of interpreting such a potentially disturbing, bleak and divisive subject matter; and of how to retain an inherent authenticity while creating a very particular visitor experience.
PROTECTION
The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civilian organization formed in 1925 to provide support to the Royal Air Force by identifying and tracking enemy aircraft. In the early 1950s, as aircraft became too fast to manually plot with the rise of the jet engine, and as understanding of the dispersed ‘fallout’ effects of nuclear weapons increased following the H Bomb tests, the British government refocused the ROC’s efforts towards the nuclear threat. Between 1957 and 1964, 1,563 monitoring posts – single room reinforced concrete bunkers – were constructed across the UK to allow the ROC to collect and to monitor data on the size and location of nuclear bursts, and on radiation levels and weather conditions. This data was to be relayed by the ROC posts to protect regional hubs such as 20 Group Headquarters where civilian volunteers would plot the effects of the nuclear weapons and predict the movement of radioactive fallout. In the event of war this information would have been of vital importance to the government and military authorities in understanding the scale of the crisis and coordinating both the military and civil governance response.
Figure 12.1. ROC 20 Group Bunker and Its Surroundings (2015, Luke Bennett).
In 1990, following the end of the Cold War, the UK government released its Options for Change report, advocating ways to drastically cut the defence budget in view of the decreased threat from Russia. As part of this review, the Royal Observer Corps was identified as being surplus to requirements, and in September 1991 its network of monitoring posts and headquarters were stood down. Some were demolished, others repurposed, but there was no concerted effort to preserve these obsolete relics.
The years around the turn of the millennium saw a surge of interest from heritage protection professionals, academics and the public in the structures and landscapes of the Cold War. English Heritage–sponsored research led to numerous publications advocating for better protection of Cold War heritage. In the foreword to Cocroft and Thomas’s comprehensive survey, ‘Cold War Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946–1989’, published by English Heritage in 2003, the organization’s then chairman, Neil Cossons, wrote:
Now these survivals from the Cold War are, in their turn, disappearing fast, like medieval monasteries and bastioned forts before them – only with more limited scope for regeneration and reuse. In such circumstances, it is clearly part of the remit of English Heritage to understand and record the scope and diversity of this body of material, to assess its cultural value, and to make the results of our work widely known. The task is the more necessary because the sense of urgency that this ‘war’ should end following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has meant that many of these structures have already been swept away. A lead from English Heritage is appropriate because of the pioneering nature of the investigation and the international dimension of the subject, and it is hoped that it will give confidence to those still looking after these sites. (Cocroft & Thomas 2003, vi)
English Heritage had recognized a need to document and preserve the structures of the Cold War; as Cocroft and Thomas put it, ‘We have paid special attention to monuments of the Cold War because it is the first time that many of them have been available for study. They are not well known or understood, and they are poorly represented in the National Monuments Record’ (2003, 2). A need for greater protection was recognized by English Heritage, and the National Monument Register was one tool which could be used to encourage people to value Cold War structures.
In the late 1990s ROC 20 Group Headquarters languished in the grounds of the regional offices of the Royal Commission for Historic Monuments in England (RCHME), which merged with English Heritage in 1999.1 English Heritage’s early championing of Cold War heritage as something of cultural and historic value and a drive to preserve Cold War structures before they vanished created an awareness of the structure’s significance just at the point that the RCHME offices and land were being sold for redevelopment. Through the fierce advocacy of Ancient Monument Inspector Keith Emerick, in 2001 the structure was added to the National Monument Register, giving it the same level of legal protection as iconic – and perhaps more conventional – treasured national heritage sites such as Stonehenge.
The Scheduled Monument Assessment of Importance justifies its preservation thus:
Royal Observer Corps Group headquarters were … a key component of Britain’s response to the Cold War. They are a very good example of the design principles behind 1950s–1960s protected installations and an important monument of Britain’s post World War II history…. Of the ten semi-sunken and nine surface-built group headquarters originally built in England, the example at York is the only one known to retain nearly all of the equipment which was in use when it was stood down in 1991, most of which had been installed since the 1960s. The example at York is thus considered to be one of the best surviving examples of either surface built or semi-sunken Royal Observer Corps group headquarters in the country.
Although never intended as a secret bunker, there was little public awareness of the work of the ROC and a decade after its stand-down, awareness of its structures was correspondingly low. Scheduling raised some public awareness, and many eyebrows, principally due to the bunker being such a modern structure. Thus, the impetus for preservation came not through a ground-swell of public opinion – indeed 15 years on local people visiting for the first time still proclaim they never knew it was there. Instead, designation came about through the patriarchal decision making of an expert elite, the individual will of the Ancient Monument Inspector and his director, and the quirk of fate that left the bunker beached in the grounds of the agency responsible for protecting England’s historic buildings.
THE INHERITANCE
The bunker is a three-storey brick and reinforced concrete structure. Its internal walls are concrete, and the majority of the building is protected with layers of brick, asphalt and almost a metre of soil. Entering through the blast door, visitors immediately encounter apparatus used to support its inhabitants in the event of a nuclear attack – decontamination rooms, air filtration machinery and a radiator room. Steep stairs descend to the middle floor which comprises the largest area of the building. Along the central spine of a corridor are grouped the sewage ejector room, a plant room containing a large generator to provide electricity and also a telephone exchange. This floor also contains living quarters for a potential staff of 60 people, including dormitories, ablutions, a kitchen and a canteen. The operations room is the largest and most important ro
om of the building, and spreads out over two floors. An upper gallery contains telephones and monitoring instruments to gather data, which would then be fed down to the lower floor and plotted on numerous large maps which dominate the room. A single staircase leads down to the bottom floor, which also houses a communications room, a small storeroom and a radio room.
Between stand-down in 1991 and scheduling in 2001 the structure languished on government land. Tucked away behind offices, there was little impetus to either sell or remove it and so it remained inert and overlooked. The ventilation system and sewage ejector had both been switched off, allowing groundwater to flood the middle floor and creating an environment moist enough to allow mould and mushrooms to flourish on carpets and walls. Failures in the external protective layers allowed water ingress into the concrete structure causing delamination of external surfaces and threatening more fundamental structural problems.
It took four years to repair the structure and remove dangerous substances: the building contained asbestos, carcinogenic heavy metals such as cadmium and now-banned air-conditioning coolants. Decisions made during that period of stabilization were not necessarily informed by a long-term vision for the curation of the site. Some changes were necessary and are barely noticeable to the visitor: the installation of a new external access ramp, and, internally the creation of a small office and accessible toilet out of one of the two dormitory spaces. Other choices, particularly to place modern electrical switches and lighting units alongside the historic, rather than to re-purpose the original, have had a greater impact on the character of the interiors. The five years between scheduling and public opening did see significant changes to the surrounding landscape. The ROC’s administration building was sacrificed as part of the commercial exchange that saw the construction of the modern apartment blocks that now cast their shadow across the structure.
ROC 20 Group Headquarters now hunkers down behind its retro-fitted security fence, incongruously crouching at the centre of a residential cul-de-sac, its clipped grass banks redolent of fastidious ROC housekeeping, but also entirely typical of the long tradition of Ministry of Works presentation of historic monuments which began nearly a century earlier on the great monasteries of Yorkshire.
Despite these interventions, there was, as the Assessment of Importance suggests, a remarkable degree of preservation. It was common practice in the 1990s for military sites to be stripped of any useful equipment when stood down, leaving only empty shells difficult for the casual visitor to interpret. York Cold War Bunker was not immune to this treatment, and much of its paraphernalia – communications equipment, telephone exchanges, bedding and early computers – was removed in 1992. However, many items remained by virtue of being obsolete, too heavy to move or bolted to the floor, or too specialized in design to be of any use elsewhere. Most of the internal fittings remained in situ: plotting screens with bomb burst stickers, partitions, notice boards, mechanical fittings (the 1961 plant room survived intact) and ephemera of notes and labels. It was these survivals that would prove key in creating a powerful and authentic atmosphere, a sense of the role of the ROC and the presence of the people who worked there.
Such survival creates conservation challenges, and the preventive measures introduced inevitably influence ongoing management and access decisions. 20 Group Headquarters is a conservator’s nightmare, filled with sensitive and delicate organic objects and a terrifying array of largely unstable plastics, rubbers and painted surfaces. Each of these will off-gas, emitting their own chemical trace that can often react aggressively to nearby artefacts (as shown in Thickett & Richardson 2008, 89–96). Human touch exacerbates this problem: chemicals on our skin can create micro-reactions on the surfaces of objects. People’s breath also introduces humidity to a naturally warm, airtight environment, exacerbating the growth of mould, and it was noted that relative humidity levels rose dramatically after York Cold War Bunker opened to the public (Thickett & Richardson 2008, 94).Being underground and airtight, dampness and humidity were an important factor to consider when selecting which objects to display. Humidity had to be carefully monitored before deciding which paper artefacts could be displayed, and staff remain constantly vigilant for the growth of mould on various surfaces.
There is almost no space in the building where historic surfaces, equipment and documentation are not within easy reach. This has the obvious risk of accidental damage, but also the risk of theft. As a consequence of 20 Group Headquarters’ physical layout, and the period arrangement of objects with few security measures, access to the bunker is restricted and supervised. Small groups are given personalized tours by highly informed guides through historic spaces containing minimal overt interpretation. Ultimately this limits the number of visitors the site can welcome, and that has had an impact on the commercial viability of the attraction, though visitors benefit by receiving a detailed and personalized interpretation of the space.
CURATING THE SPACE
There is a temptation when presenting an historic interior to meddle: to recreate what has been lost or improve where it is degraded, to reposition and protect for convenience or conservation. At 20 Group Headquarters the curatorial team consciously avoided this. The building exuded its own special character, an authenticity that would have been difficult to establish artificially. Original notices and documents still clung to walls and display boards. Its former occupants had left their marks in felt tip, oil spatters and coffee cup rings. The ROC as an organization was somewhat improvisational: while each headquarters had the same basic equipment and was built to one of two basic designs, each group adapted its own ways of using the space and equipment provided. This individuality, giving a window on the human response to the Cold War, was particularly evident in the plethora of handmade notices and signs. Without purpose once the ROC was stood down, these abandoned papers gave insights into the people who made them. Curiously it was these ‘temporary’ ephemerae that breathed life into the internal spaces, their impact emphasized by their unexpected permanence (Figure 12.2).
Figure 12.2. The Mundane Paraphernalia of Nuclear War: Inside York Bunker (2015, Luke Bennett).
English Heritage acquired an extensive but incomplete historic environment. There were significant physical gaps – the loss of much of the technical equipment – but also intellectual gaps on how the building and its processes had actually worked. Three resources allowed English Heritage curators to begin to close those gaps. First, a series of photographs were taken by Roger Thomas, then of the RCHME, in 1992. Thomas, who had had to convince his superior of the validity of even documenting such a modern structure, managed to gain access at the point the communications equipment was being removed (equipment that would later be found dumped in a government store in Staffordshire and brought back to the site). His photographic series records the headquarters effectively at stand-down. Without it an accurate presentation of the interiors would not have been possible. Second, a growing archive of primary ROC documentation and government training films enabled systems and processes, and how they linked to the physical space, to be unpicked. Lastly English Heritage was also able to rely upon the oral histories of a number of ROC veterans who were actively involved in the later period of the building’s use. These memories not only added to our knowledge but also brought emotions and anecdotes to a relatively bare interior.
Given the survival of the interiors, the richness of our photographic archive and the strength of veterans’ memories of the last period of operation, the decision was made to present the building as it had appeared in 1991. It was not felt necessary to take the building further back in time, perhaps to a more dramatic point such as the early 1960s. To do so risked creating a fiction, and would have required alterations to what was the excellent stage set left by chance. Opting for this later date made it easier to source appropriate equipment: our curators had already begun to collect Cold War objects before acquiring 20 Group Headquarters. However, not everything removed from the building in 199
1 could be located, and there was much still that was not known to be missing. The curatorial team decided to reinstate only what could be proven to have been there, instead of re-creating or settling for similar period pieces: if an original object could not be found, it would be acceptable to have gaps rather than faking it.
Conducting research at York Cold War Bunker and other British Cold War heritage sites and museums, Samantha Harris (2009, 17) commented on the success of restored bunkers in communicating a Cold War atmosphere and environment to the public:
Bunkers such as Kelvedon Hatch and York [Cold War Bunker] with their confined spaces create a claustrophobic and immersive atmosphere with a sense of the period which construct a strong setting for interpretation of the buildings and Cold War themes. These buildings are not merely a container in which the interpretation is set, but are integral as an aid to (and object of) that interpretation, fully integrated with the artefacts and other mediated content as the spaces work with the objects to create a feel of authenticity.
Yet, that sense of authenticity is not quite complete. If the look and feel (tactile engagement is difficult to prevent) is convincing, the sounds and smell have proved more difficult to replicate. Absent is the drone of the ventilation system, vibrations and rumble of the generator, clack of teleprinters and muffled hubbub of 60 people in occupation. Only the sewage ejector continues as an echo of the past, grinding into action for a noisy 30-second fanfare every 20 minutes. Although fulfilling the relatively mundane role of keeping groundwater out of the building and transferring waste to the surrounding sewage network, the sewage ejector does interrupt the tranquillity of the space. Visitors are usually startled, and this disconcerting alien sound does introduce a sense of shock and fear as well as a sense of use.