Northern Ireland's Secret Bunker

Useful Information

Location:	Derrylettiff Rd, Portadown, Craigavon BT62 1QU. From Belfast M1, exit 12 Craigavon (Portdown) A4, A4 towards Portdown 3 km, turn right 450 m, turn right. On the left side in a fenced of piece of land. (54.45779, -6.51175)
Open:	Open days are posted on facebook. [2024]
Fee:	free, donations welcome. [2024]
Classification:	Secret Bunker
Light:	Incandescent
Dimension:
Guided tours:
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:
Address:	Northern Ireland's Secret Bunker, Derrylettiff Rd, Portadown, Tel: +44-7921-167775. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1959	bunker built.
1991	bunkers decommissioned.
2009	acquired by Alistair McCann and restored.

Description

Northern Ireland's Secret Bunker is a bunker from the Cold War era, which is located in northern Ireland. It is definitely a secret bunker, on the surface there is only a concrete podest with a steel plate. After opening the plate a ladder leads down into the bunker. It looks so harmless, it is normally not recognized as a bunker. The site is operated by a non-profit association. Unfortunately they abandoned their website for a facebook page, which is as uninformative as always, so we recommend to send an email instead.

It was a monitoring post, a master post as well as a ROCMET post. In other words, it was not intended to be a safe place for people, it was a military infrastructure manned by Royal Observer Corps (ROC) soldiers. It contains the original radio and MET equipment, the radio is in working condition. The RSGB special event call sign of the post is GB1ROC. The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) had 58 such bunkers in Northern Ireland, manned by volunteers. Their job was to monitor and report on any nuclear explosions and radioactive fallout.

After the Cold War, those bunkers were actually unnecessary, the largest such bunker was put on the market by the government for £575,000 in 2016. This failed, it was withdrawn from sale due to health and safety issues. However, this much smaller post was acquired by Alistair McCann and restored. He opened it as a unique museum.

The small bunker has two rooms, living quarters and an operational area. The main monitoring room contains bunkbeds. The post was manned with three soldiers, in the case of a nuclear war they would have been down in this post for three weeks, completely cut off.