Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker

We're just mooring up at Hack Green on the Shropshire Union

Canal in Cheshire, and the reason we're stopping here is

that just a couple of minutes walk from the bridge is the Hack

Green secret nuclear bunker, a relic from the Cold War era.

There are brown tourist signs for it all over the place now,

so it's hardly a secret anymore, but as we've not been there

before, that's what we'll be doing in this episode of the

Water Rd. So I'm here at the secret

nuclear bunker with Jason, who's the general manager.

So just tell me, what is the bunker and what can people see

here? It's a historical museum about

the Cold War. The.

Soviet Union. About what it calls.

Dangerous provocations by American warships in the Gulf of

Oman. We started off as a radar

station during the sort of the early years of the Cold War, the

1940s, Nineteen 50s. We're still a radar station in

the 1960s, but by that time we were sort of dealt with.

Air traffic control closed for a long time, 15 to 20 year period

until the early 1980s. The government spent a huge sums

of money in 1980s terms, millions of pounds £32,000,000,

and kitted out the bunker to become effectively a command

centre in the event of a nuclear war.

So we would have become the capital wielding for the

northwest of England from here. So we would have decided how to

deal with survivors in Manchester, Liverpool, Chester,

Preston, Lancaster, basically that whole strip going all the

way up to Scotland. So why is it actually here in

this spot? Because we're kind of in the

middle of nowhere. We are as far back as World War

Two. There was a site here which was

called a Starfish site, which is basically a decoy for a crew

station. So the idea was that hopefully

it would fool German bombers trying to bomb crew station and

they would fly here and drop their bombs here.

Hopefully in World War 2 when they were developing radar, they

realised that this site here is is a very nice flat area in the

Cheshire Plain. And so they sited a radar

station here after that which watched the skies over the

Liverpool docks area in the northwest Manchester and so on

and so on. And the stuff was mounted on the

back of trucks in those days rather than being a permanent

site so it could be moved around if necessary.

After World War 2, then we, we became a permanent Cold War

radar station, a rota radar station, which was built at

again, great expense. And they, they literally threw

money at the project to get it built once the Soviets had

developed their own nuclear weapons.

So that's why the building was here originally.

Once it had been decommissioned as a radar station, you're left

with a concrete bunk head basically you're not really sure

what to do with. But in the event that it had

become useful in the future, they never like to throw those,

you know, sort of completely demolish these kinds of

buildings. So effectively it's just reused

and repurposed. And was it always secret or was

it not a secret when it was a radar station?

It it was critical infrastructure.

So you would have, if you were posted here, doing your national

service, you're working in A at a top secret site during the

1980s, though you're a reserve building for the running of the

country. So you can't get a whole lot

more secret than that, really. And in those days when it was

secret, was there a staff here the whole time or was it just a

a building that was waiting to be staffed if the need?

So there was. There was a cadre of people

working here all the time, sort of the the the day-to-day

running of the building. There would be war games taking

place here to plan around the best way to deal with a a

scenario like that. Other people had come in and to

put their skills from time to time, coming in once or twice a

week perhaps if it was say the the local BT engineers making

looking at their equipment. This is a routine British

Telecom emergency communications network test message for

regional government headquarters Station 10.

Two test message begins AQK2. Standby.

FDB8. They were very rarely fully

staffed. I think there was one situation

when it was fully staffed, which was during the minor strike,

which is when basically they decided the situation was so

dire that they needed to potentially move to disaster

planning. And you mentioned disaster

because when you go around the museum, there's the disaster is

quite a a theme, isn't it? It's quite frightening.

Indeed, as soon as you walk in through the building there are

decommissioned nuclear weapons completely safe to look at

nowadays. But yeah, the the sort of things

that were many, many, many more times powerful than the bombs

dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They were the nuclear deterrent basically for, for the UK in the

60s, seventies, 80s, 90s. We work with the atomic weapons

establishment at Oldham Mast and they loan us the decommissioned

warheads and we work with them to show the public the dangers

and the, the skills that are needed And you know, and

hopefully making people understand just how awful a

nuclear war could be in many ways.

It's not just the, the initial damage which is the problem.

It's all it's everything which comes after, up to and including

potentially the the total collapse of society.

We. Interrupt regular programming to

bring you a message from Her Majesty's Government.

Please stand by and await further information.

This is an emergency warning from the BBC.

Information of a possible nuclear strike against this

country has been received. And I think those of us who grew

up in the 80s and 90s probably remember that we all feared a

nuclear war, didn't we? That?

But that seems to have. That's gone away a bit, hasn't

it? Really?

It did. And then I started working here

just after COVID. And at the time, we used to make

a, you know, a little joke with the public about aren't we lucky

that the, you know, the nuclear war apocalypse never happened.

And basically we're dealing with with little germs, staying at

home, watching box sets on TV, trying not to be bored out of

our minds. But then, you know, as, as these

things often do, the world changed again and we had a

little war going on in the Ukraine, which has brought

everything back to very, very sharp focus for.

And it seems remarkable that we're so close to the canal and

yet the whole place was secret and people didn't really know it

was here. Indeed, apparently the personnel

posted here in the 50s and 60s during their their free time

would climb up onto the roof of the building.

There was a sort of an area where they could relax and have

a few minutes outside and wave to the boaters.

But not when it was probably. No, no.

So they must have known something was going on here.

But as to exactly what that was, I think they were they, you

know, they would be blissfully unaware.

And now everyone is blissfully aware because there's signs

about the secret you'd. Indeed, it's one of the little

jokes, isn't it? We get people coming in from a

far and wide who like to tell us about how it's not such a secret

bunker anymore because they followed the signs to get here.

Well, after that brief visit to reality, we're back on the move

in the world of the canals and just north of the bridge where

you can walk to the nuclear bunker from there are the 2 hack

green locks. Now we're in the Cheshire Plain

here, so the two locks only go down 12 feet between them, and

in fact the next lock on the Shropshire Union mainline is

almost 9 miles further on. Now at the top lock there's a

former stables and that's a reminder of when the horse drawn

fly boats used to operate on the canal.

They were often carrying perishable cargoes and they used

to run 24 hours a day. And there were regular stables

all along the route so that the horses could be changed.

And if you just look behind the stables, you can see the site of

the nuclear bunker. You can't actually see the

bunker itself because the trees have grown up.

But you can see one of the big radars and you can certainly see

the massive great communications tower, which is one of the

reasons that the mobile signal is so good.

Even though we're in the middle of nowhere,

we're down the locks. And that means that's all for

this episode of The Water Rd. The podcast is produced and

presented by me, Adam Porter. If you want to find out more

about the Hack Green Secret Nuclear bunker, there's a link

in the episode description. Thank you to everyone who's

followed or subscribed to The Water Rd.

There are now more than 1200 of you.

If you haven't yet taken the plunge, just click follow or

subscribe wherever you listen and you'll be alerted when

future episodes are published. And don't forget, all previous

editions are always available to listen to.

If you've enjoyed what you've heard, please leave us a nice

review or a comment because it really does help other people

find us. Thank you for listening to The

Water Ropes.

The Story