Hartington Royal Observer Corps Nuclear Bunker

Did you know that Hartington has it's own nuclear bunker?

Well it has, as Hartington was the home to one of 1,563 Royal Observer Corps bunkers that were built at the height of the Cold War as a means of reporting nuclear explosions and monitoring fall-out.

Some 700 of these bunkers have already been filled in, but a number have been offered for sale to the public, and the Hartington bunker was sold for £8,311 on June 1st 2003 on Ebay.

And, if you think eight thousand quid is a lot of money for a hole in the ground, well, on the same day somebody paid £25,100 for an identical post in Flookborough in the Lake District.

On 25 May 2003, the Hartington bunker was open for the day as part of the lead-up to the sale, so we decided to visit. We've known of the site since we first bought the Bears Barn in 1997, but this was the first time it had been open. It's sited on a hill overlooking the village at map reference SK 12945995. If you don't have a map, take the footpath to the right of the pottery directly opposite the Barn and walk past the farm on the right. After about 400m you'll come to a stile but don't go through it, just look immediately up to the left and you'll see a small hillock, the bunker is at the top of that. The bunker was opened in January 1958 and was eventually closed in September 1991.

The hatch is about 120cm square leading down a 4.5m shaft via a metal ladder into two rooms. The smaller contains a chemical toilet (and no, we didn't lift the lid just in case...) with a larger monitoring room measuring 4.5m by 2.3m. A ventilation shaft with two louvered vents is located alongside the entrance shaft with a second air shaft at the other end of the room. Lighting is provided by a 12 volt battery located behind the monitoring room door, although this wasn't working. There was a hand pump by the ladder, we didn't try it but the whole bunker was completely dry anyway.