Nuclear bunker was beneath post office

11:01am Saturday 7th June 2008

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By Lucy Tatchell »

A FORMER post office worker has confirmed rooms beneath Worcester's main branch would have been used as a bunker in the event of a nuclear attack.

Les Jones worked for the Post Office for 40 years and was in charge of the building in Foregate Street when it was decommissioned.

He told your Worcester News some of the rooms were set up as a communication centre in case of a nuclear bombing during the Cold War.

He said when workers cleared the rooms in 1970 there were 12 single beds with foam mattresses and grey blankets, two telephone exchange points and 50 boxes of ration packs.

"It was adapted for a nuclear attack. It was not widely known, but it was not top secret, people knew what was down there but not what it would be used for," he said.

On Thursday, your Worcester News published pictures of the city's secret nuclear bunker.

Royal Mail said the underground network of 10 rooms were built during the war as an air raid shelter. Work stopped during the war, but the building was completed in 1953. Mr Jones, aged 71, of Lower Broadheath, near Worcester, said there was also a chemical toilet and a water sterilisation plant.

A reader calling himself private sector worker, from Kidderminster, commented on the story on your Worcester News' website worcesternews.co.uk: "I worked as a counter clerk at Worcester branch office in the mid-90s and although I never went down there I knew there was a bunker and firing range. We used to talk about whether it was a nuclear bunker but no one really knew."

Graham Lane is the chairman of Worcester and Norton Shooting Club, which bought the guns used in the rifle range from them.

"It was built as part of a communications network linked with several in the country including Swansea and Yorkshire," he said. "My wife used to work there and would check the phone lines. The place was kept immaculate."

Lesley Smith, aged 61, from Dines Green, Worcester, worked at the telephone exchange in Pierpoint Street, and says a nuclear bunker was beneath that building.

"I remember we had to go down there for a civil defence exercise to learn how to use the switchboard in case there was an attack," she said.

Another telephonist was Jackie Pouch, aged 64, from Ombersley, near Worcester. "We had to go and check all the phones were working and all the food in date," she said.