Over in Aspley, nestled in a modern housing estate, a preserved relic of the Cold War era stands solemnly. With a multitude of curious features, from furniture to forgotten documents, The Nottingham War Rooms holds a wealth of insight into how the Government were preparing in the Midlands for a nuclear attack.
With renovations planned to give the building a new life, we spoke to architectural photographer and Nottingham Trent University (NTU) Senior Lecturer Martine Hamilton Knight, who recently had the chance to photograph the space, and Dr Daniel Cordle, until recently an Associate Professor at NTU, who specialises in nuclear culture and history, to find out more.
The Nottingham War Rooms looks like it has a fascinating past. What can you tell us about the building and Nottingham’s links to the Cold War?
Dan: The bunker was constructed in two phases. In 1952-53 it was built as a Regional War Room which would have coordinated local civil defence response in the event of an atomic attack on the region and liaised with central government. A second phase of the building, enveloping the original, was constructed in the early 1960s. The plan by then was that it would be a Regional Seat of Government, an RSG, able to operate independently of central government and responsible for governing a large region - or what was left of it - after a nuclear attack. There was a strong feeling that central government might cease to exist, at least in the short term, and that local areas would have to get by on their own.
There's something interesting in that all these preparations for civil defence against nuclear war always feel like they're a little bit out of date. So the original war room, I think, was designed with the idea that it would be able to survive the atomic bomb - if it wasn't a direct hit - but by the end of the 1950s, the hydrogen bomb, which is often described as 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb, had come along, and they didn't think they could build something to survive that, so they built the extension to survive radioactive fallout. Secrecy was presumably crucial to its survival, but the existence and location of the RSGs was actually leaked in the early 1960s.
Can you talk a little about who would have been stationed there?
Dan: It would have housed about 430 people and there would have been a Regional Commissioner who would have been in charge of the North Midlands region of the country in the event of nuclear war. It's a striking story, not just about nuclear fear, but also about how the country would be governed in an emergency situation and about democratic accountability. The Commissioner would have had a frightening level of power.
Intriguingly, too, people who came in would have had to make very quick decisions about leaving family and friends. Some wouldn't have known they were on a list to be in this place, and would have found out at very short notice that they were expected to be in the bunker.
It's a striking story, not just about nuclear fear, but also about how the country would be governed in an emergency situation
…And do you know what would follow once these people were safely inside?
Dan: Well, the primary purpose of the RSGs was for continuity of government. There’s an intriguing shift in the idea of civil defence that takes place during the 1950s and 1960s from the idea that you can provide rescue and recovery for ordinary people to the idea that simple survival of the structures of administration is the best you can hope for in the short term. What the idea of ‘nation’ would have meant in this situation is hard to say. The RSG would presumably have tried to organise relief and to preserve a semblance of social order, but it’s hard not to think they’d have been overwhelmed. Civil defence during the Cold War was always a bit mysterious and perhaps also seemed rather absurd to many - a delusion. Some of it is bluff - gesturing toward civil defence as part of convincing your enemy you’d be willing to fight a nuclear war - and perhaps some of it is wishful thinking; some of it might well be, well, we just can't really afford to think about it properly, so here’s the best we can do - it was hard to make the case for spending lots of money on it. Nuclear war could feel like an abstract threat, a lot of the time, even if there were moments like the Cuban missile crisis, or like the early 1980s, when there was a lot of public concern about the possibility.
Visually it's very chaotic as you can see from the images, but also it's the human things like the toilets, which are classic junior school toilets. There's that sense of everything unravelling outside the door while you're still trying to maintain normality in your workplace, with no windows, while everybody's dying outside.
This looks like a dream place for a photography expedition, what was it like capturing the place?
Martine: It was really clear that we needed to document this building before it underwent enormous structural change. It's listed, but in order to put it back into practical use, there's got to be significant adjustments to it as a structure in order to allow it to function with a new life. So I knew there was a really short deadline on being able to capture it in an emotive manner.
Because of the nature in which the building was decommissioned but then used for storage, it's still carried on telling a story about extreme incident control, because Defra then took it over and there's some really curious stuff stored in there, such as from the 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak, which again is about incident control and threat to humanity and animals.
So visually it's very chaotic as you can see from the images, but also it's the human things like the toilets, which are classic junior school toilets. There's that sense of everything unravelling outside the door while you're still trying to maintain normality in your workplace, with no windows, while everybody's dying outside. I thought oh my goodness, I've got to photograph it. So I basically jumped on Dan's case and went ‘no more photos from phones. Please can I do this properly? Let's use this opportunity to create something with visual integrity and legacy.’
Dan: It's a place that speaks in new ways now - I think particularly in the last couple of years when nuclear anxieties have become more prominent again. So I think this building speaks to the 21st century world intriguingly, as well as to a Cold War history.
Did you come across anything particularly unusual or intriguing whilst in there?
Martine: The building has been incredibly disturbed. It does look like it's gone through its own form of war. There were large amounts of asbestos in it that Homes England, who currently administer the site, had to remove, so a huge amount of stuff got moved around and there are random things in random places. It has this really sort of disjointed and chaotic feel. Plus also I had to light the shots to supplement the temporary lighting that's in there, because there are some rooms that are in complete pitch blackness. Psychologically, most would find it very uncomfortable. And it's right next to brand new housing development, which is really incongruous.
Dan: There are shadows on the wall where the clocks used to be, because either the clocks have been put in storage or someone's nicked them, but I think time would have felt strange and uncanny there. You would have had no cues from outside of what time of day it was because there are no windows. You'd have been sealed off. There's an odd, bureaucratic idea of what society is and what human existence is. Essentially the bunker’s a kind of glorified office complex with some military dimensions to it. There are all kinds of in-trays, filing systems and messaging systems.
There’s an upcoming event at Broadway on 23 September where people can find out more. Can you talk a little bit about this?
Dan: Dr Sarah Jackson, a colleague at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), and I ran a ‘Creative Archive’ project at the bunker. With the support of NTU’s Institute for Knowledge Exchange Practice (who also supported Martine’s photography expedition) and the Centre for Research in Literature, Linguistics and Culture, and also with the generous help of Homes England and Hamilton Russell, who are seeking to develop the bunker, we took writers and experts into it. We gave them a tour and ran a writing workshop there, and people developed poetry and fiction from that event. The book that is coming out of that work, Bunker: Stories and Poems From a Nuclear Age, will be published by Five Leaves Publications and launched at the event. We’ve timed it to coincide with a 40th anniversary screening of the landmark BBC film about nuclear war, Threads, at the Broadway, which I’ll also be introducing.
Threads might be one of the bleakest things ever shown on British TV, but it's a brilliant piece of filmmaking - I mean, absolutely astonishing. It was scripted by Barry Hines, who's well known for the book A Kestrel for a Knave, which was turned into a Ken Loach film Kes, and it was directed by Mick Jackson, who went on to direct several Hollywood films. I think what's striking about Threads is that you see the world collapsing. So it's not so much the horror of nuclear war itself, though that is part of the film, as it is the sense of existential threat which makes it so striking. It portrays a society that descends to mediaeval levels; an existential threat to the very idea of a nurturing human society.
Tickets to the screening of Threads on Monday 23 September at Broadway Cinema are available here. If you’d like to attend the launch of Bunker: Stories and Poems from a Nuclear Age, you can book your place here.
To read more about the Nottingham War Rooms go to nottinghamwarrooms.co.uk
To see more of Martine's work or learn more about her book Photography for Architects, follow her on Instagram @martine_hamilton_knight
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