If you happen to have £50,000, why not bid for this secret underground bunker built during the Cold War which will soon go under the auction gavel?
The said underground bunker is found in Coswarth, Cornwall and was constructed in 1978 at the height of the Cold War. Its main purpose was to allow the then South West Water Authority to be able to carry on operations for water and sewerage should in the event that a nuclear emergency should occur.
The underground bunker marked only by a discreetly small brick entrance building measures 3,000 square feet and has the capability to house 16 people: seven individuals in the operations room, six in the communications room and three in the control room. Its guide price in its coming auction is £50,000.
The underground bunker features a number of blast-proof doors as well as an air lock with rooms for decontamination, dining, recreation and two sleeping quarters.
These rooms are all located deep underground.
Brian Lake, the asset performance manager of South West Water and was a worker for the Authority the time the underground bunker was built recalled visiting it as it was being prepped up for likely habitation.
“I remember that the Government said we had to provide an underground control center in case of emergency which was bomb and nuclear proof. It wasn’t fully kitted out as there was no furniture in there, but if something had happened you could have lived in there for weeks,” he recounted.
The Authority’s property manager, Chris Shapland, further commented:
“We regularly auction redundant assets to reduce our costs and keep customers’ bills as low as possible, but this is the first time we’ve offered a genuine piece of Cold War history.
Novelty sites with small areas of surplus land always attract strong interest as people are able to invest relatively modest sums for their ‘little bit of England’.”
According to him, there are a number of the Authority’s former storage reservoirs and pumping stations which were auctioned off and have been converted into extraordinary homes by their new owners.
“It will be interesting to see what happens to the bunker – you never know who could end up using it,” he added pointing to the impending sale of the underground bunker.
The said underground bunker along with some connecting lands will go down the hammer this coming March 25.