Regional Seat of Government, Government Buildings

Details

646-1/0/10031
18-JUL-03

CHALFONT DRIVE
Regional Seat of Government, Government Buildings

II

Cold War bunker. Early 1950s War Room, extended c1963 as a Regional Seat of Government. Reinforced concrete construction. Two-storey surface structure, the smaller War Room to the north being planned with a central map room surrounded by control cabins, offices and plant room; its exterior has been completely absorbed by the much larger Regional Seat of Government whose interior is subdivided into a basement level, plant rooms and offices on the ground floor and dormitories above. The elevations have been subtly decorated through the use of shuttering boards. The core of the building is flanked on the east and west elevations by 4-bay arcades formed by piloti that flank the central stair projections and support the upper floors that comprises a vast rectangular slab canted upwards at the corners. Superstructure on the roof houses the intake for the structures air supply. Interior: As at Cambridge and Mill Hill (London), the central well to the operations room has been floored over, but the 1950s War Room interior is otherwise remarkably intact. Its features include the generator plant and air filtration systems that sustained life within the structure, original light fittings and the message centre that co-ordinated communication through message tubes throughout the building. The Regional Seat of Government is also complete, with similar air filtration plant, a BBC studio and dormitories with original signage and nightlights. Concrete stairs and steel doors to air locks.

HISTORICAL NOTE: Together with the Regional Seat of Government (RSG) at Brooklands, Cambridge, this survives as the only purpose-built RSG erected in England and - with Kirknewton in Scotland - one of a group of three structures designed to operate in a post-nuclear attack environment where architectural consideration has been given to the outward appearance. It shares with Mill Hill in north London the distinction of being the most complete example of a War Room after the example at Bristol, and the internal fittings of the Regional Seat of Government have similarly been unaffected by the restripping that so often characterised these sites in the 1980s.

During much of the 20th century the possibility of the breakdown of central government control was a constant concern, prompted first by revolutions on the continent, later by industrial strikes at home and finally the spectre of total war through air attack. To counter these threats, the country was divided from the 1920s into 12 Home Defence Regions, each to be controlled by a Regional Commissioner in case of emergency. Initially these regions were to be run from existing government offices, or improvised shelters in basements. However, in the early 1950s, each of the Regional Commissioners was provided with a War Room, in an attempt to protect them and their staff (of around 50), from an attack on the country with atomic bombs.

These War Rooms - bunkers designed to counter the effects of nuclear weapons - represented a new type of architecture in Britain. Their form, with a central operations room surrounded by control cabins, supported by communications rooms, air conditioning plant and emergency generators, was designed for this one purpose. The 1950s Regional War Rooms or Commissioner's Offices represent the first time that purpose-built structures were provided for the Regional Commissioners, who were to administer Britain in the event of war or the break down of normal central government. They also represent, along with buried contemporary radar bunkers ('Rotor' bunkers), the first generation of structures designed to survive and operate after the country had been attacked with atomic weapons. They therefore reflect contemporary concerns about the threat of war in Europe, brought about in the late 1940s by aggressive communist-inspired acts, including the Berlin Crisis and communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia. The renewal of Britain's civil defence infrastructure during the early 1950s was part of wider rearmament programme precipitated by the Korean War, which had broken out in 1950.

In the late 1950s, with the greater threat posed by the Soviet H-bomb, the earlier system of emergency central government was restructured. In place of the smaller War Rooms, the Commissioners in each Region (London was now deleted) were supplied with a Regional Seat of Government for around 200 staff. Their larger size is significant as it was envisaged that the regions would need to remain autonomous for a longer period due to the far greater devastation posed by the H-bomb. The designers recognised that no structure could withstand the full effects of an H-bomb and were primarily concerned instead to protect the staff against the effects of fallout. They reflect the very real fear of nuclear war in the late 1950s/early 1960s - as evidenced by Krushchev's sabre rattling over Berlin (the Wall was built in August 1961 about the time that the RSGs were being planned), and the fear of Soviet missile capacity continued after the launch of Sputnik through to the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. The architecture also reflects change in design philosophy, that no structure can withstand close blast from an H-bomb: windowless concrete walls are designed to protect against heat effects and severely reduce penetration of radiation.

The Cambridge and Nottingham RSGs comprise the only purpose-built examples and, moreover, the most impressive examples of Cold War 'architecture' (by which we mean monumental structures which have applied and conscious external treatment) in England, augmented by the example at Kirknewton in Scotland which is essentially identical to the Cambridge bunker. These features borrow from contemporary Brutalist architecture in order to clearly exhibit their grim function through their architectural treatment. Both were designed as two-storey surface structures, the impression of planks used for shuttering having been used to decorative effect. The Cambridge bunker has washed gravel alternating with plain panels, the latter being subtly decorated through the use of shuttering boards; the exterior presents a solid slab of concrete unpunctuated by openings and relieved only by formed concrete hoods to the external duct openings. Unlike their employment in the South Bank complex and some public housing of the period the use of these features does not amount to the employment of a Brutalist 'style' for this building. Their employment does, however, amount to a conscious cross-reference to contemporary architectural fashion. Whilst the exterior of the Nottingham bunker completely absorbed the 1950s War Room, unlike at Cambridge and Kirknewton where there is a clear visual juxtaposition relating to the threats posed by two kinds of nuclear threat, and it lacks the overtly architectural treatment of its ventilation ducts, its overall form is far more Brutalist in its inspiration. It is probable, indeed, that such buildings needed to be visually impressive and forbidding - which they undoubtedly were - as much to impress visiting government ministers or local leaders and dignitaries, as for truly functional reasons. As the Cold War was essentially an era of bluff and counter-bluff, the illusion of being well prepared for nuclear strike might have been considered as important as the actual preparations themselves. The same could be said for impressing our allies and the local population, fulfilling a need to show that there were preparations in hand should the unthinkable happen, as it so nearly did in 1962. There was, moreover, a desire on the part of the politicians and designers to produce something recognisably modern. The architecture of modernism in the early sixties was synonymous with efficiency and the new, and it might well be that the designers consciously chose to clad the building in the symbols of modernity which were based on the architecture of Le Corbusier in order to assist with this effect. With its pilotis, its exposed shuttered-concrete and its sculptural roofline this building owes an enormous and very direct debt to the contemporary work of Corbusier, especially the Unite d'Habitation.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

490445

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Mitchell, A, On the Beach at Cambridge, (1981)

Other
Regional Seat of Governement, English Heritage Survey Report, (1997)

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