The Drakelow Tunnels
Drakelow Tunnels are a former Top Secret underground military complex beneath Kingsford Country Park north of Kidderminster, Worcestershire. The complex is now open to the public and apparently haunted.
The tunnels were dug between 1941 and 1942 in order to build a “shadow factory” for the Rover car company, mostly machining parts for aircraft engines.
A shadow factory was a method of production devised in Britain in the late 1930s, whereby both knowledge and machinery could be cross-pollenated between industries, by experts “shadowing” each other, as at Drakelow between auto and aircraft manufacturers.
The underground factory consisted of three and a half miles of tunnels, laid out in a grid system. There were also a number of surface buildings which included a boiler house, coal stores, electricity sub stations and a fire station. The tunnels were used throughout World War II and for most of the 1950s, first for aircraft then for tank engines.
From 1961 the British Government took half of the tunnels and converted them into a top secret “shadow government” headquarters, one of thirteen such sites in the UK forming a network of underground bunkers.
Designed for a staff of 325,the bunker contained dormitories, storage areas, workshops, electrical equipment, toilets, offices, a BBC studio, a GPO Telephones communications facility and other facilities.
Though updated with blast doors and other "end of the world" accoutrements in the 1980s, Drakelow was decommissioned after the fall of the Soviet Union and sold into private hands.
Park of the complex is now open to the public as a museum.
According to paranormal investigators from American television series Paranormal Lockdown, the tunnels are one of the most haunted sites in Britain.
Further reading
Links to external websites are not maintained by Bite Sized Britain. They are provided to give users access to additional information. Bite Sized Britain is not responsible for the content of these external websites.