How Churchill’s Battle of Britain bunker was hidden from German bombers
Winston Churchill’s Battle of Britain Bunker was hidden from the Nazis underneath a formal garden, research has revealed.
The secret site in Uxbridge, west London, was camouflaged during the Second World War to look like part of a landscaped design from the air, avoiding enemy detection.
It was following a visit to this bunker, on Aug 16, 1940, that Churchill first uttered his famous words about the Battle of Britain: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.
As it was a top-secret site housing RAF Fighter Command 11 Group, there are no known wartime photographs of how the bunker looked above ground.
However, a new study of historic aerial photographs suggests the underground control room which coordinated Britain’s defences and response to attacks from the Luftwaffe was disguised to look like part of the landscape of Hillingdon House, a nearby mansion.
Now, 86 years after its construction, conservation work and repairs have enabled archaeological investigations and other studies to reveal the lengths to which the RAF went to protect the military command centre built 60ft below ground.
The new evidence shows that the bunker had numerous defences. Deep levels of earth and concrete were piled up to protect against direct hits from above, while barbed wire entanglements were intended to see off enemy attack at ground level.
The archaeological work was instructed and monitored by Historic England’s Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service and undertaken by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) on behalf of Hillingdon Council.
Sandy Kidd, an archaeologist at Historic England, said: “The discovery of the multiple and layered defensives employed to keep this secret nerve centre safe tells us something of the fear of the bunker being compromised, which could have spelt disaster for the country … We’re still able to add to our knowledge of this extraordinary place.”
Jim McKeon, MOLA project manager, said: “MOLA is delighted to have contributed to building a greater understanding of this nationally significant monument.
“By bringing the various strands of information together – archaeological evidence, documentary sources, aerial photography and historic maps – we now have a good idea of how the exterior of the bunker looked during the Second World War, as can be seen in the new artistic impression produced by the MOLA graphics team.”
The Grade I-listed Battle of Britain Bunker is now a popular visitor attraction and education centre managed by Hillingdon Council. The operations room – with its large map table and squadron display boards – is just as Churchill would have recognised it.
Piers Brendon, a former director of the Churchill Archives Centre at the University of Cambridge, said of the new research: “It testifies to the terrific precautions that were taken to protect Churchill.”
He added: “Churchill did live quite a lot underground. The Cabinet War Rooms testify to that. But he resented becoming a troglodyte and didn’t like it at all. Only with great reluctance did he go underground, although the Germans were known to target prominent people.”