Beneath St Boniface Down, lays a cold war nuclear bunker.
This secret underground structure has remained undisturbed for many years with almost
all trace of the site above ground having been long demolished or removed.
The bunker has been sealed and buried since the early 90s, in 2008
a small group of Island Explorers managed to re-gain entry into the site,
however shortly after the news of this was made public the entrance was quickly filled in
capped and buried... 
Seemingly sealing the underground bunker… permanently.
Having never had a chance to explore, in the years following I, like many
searched around surrounding area, hoping to discover another way in.
In early 2016 I was informed of a couple of people working on a potential lead,
their plan to find a way in was certainly plausible but it was also hugely ambitious,
because of this, doubtful that they'd be successful I  put it out of my mind....
Several months passed and then late one evening I received a tip off...
The Ventnor R1 Bunker had been cracked again!
RAF Ventnor was one of the original 20 Chain Home radar stations commissioned in 1938
Chain Home was the code name for 
network of early warning radar systems
and it comprised of a series of linked coastal radio stations that extended the entire length of the country,
The Chain Home was designed to provide an early warning from
an approaching threat from the German Luftwaffe
and became operational just in time for the Battle of Britain.
In 1939 the Germans became suspicious of the construction of large radar towers along the coast of Britain
and began secretly monitoring the output from the masts,
fortunately for Britain, the Germans were unable to identify the true purpose of the radar frequencies
and dismissed the idea of Britain having an operational radar defence system.
Despite perhaps not knowing the full purpose of the Chain Home stations
RAF Ventnor was attacked twice by German bombers during August of 1940.
The first attack only resulted in minimal damage with reports of the station being back operational within an hour,
the second attack caused significantly more damaged to the surface buildings
and resulted in the station being taken offline.
The station was put out of operation for a couple of months and as a contingency measure
for future outages a permanent reserve station was built in St Lawrence.
The Chain Home stations played a crucial role during the war,
Germany planned to bomb Britain into submission with the might of the Luffwaffe
, who had been instrumental in the success across much of mainland Europe
Chain Home enabled aircraft to be scrambled directly to an incoming enemy attack,
giving the perception that Britain had many more resources and was much stronger than it was.
Failure to overwhelm the RAF forced Germany to cancel
a planned amphibious invasion of Britain called "Operation SeaLion"
and this inability to destroy Britain's air defences was a crucial turning point in the war.
RAF Ventnor continued to play a key role up until the end of WW2,
the station was used to monitor V2 rockets launched
across the channel and assisted in the formation of the D-Day invasion craft.
On the 20th of November 1947 a Newspaper plane heading to
the cChannel Island Jersey struck one of the receiver radar masts killing both crew members
At the end of the war RAF Ventnor was put into care and maintenance
and in 1957 the remaining radar masts were removed.
Following the successful 1949 soviet atom bomb testing, Britain was once again perceived as vulnerable from air attack,
a new country wide air defence plan was urgently launched called
called the "Rehabilitation Of The Old Radars program" (ROTOR).
In order to get the ROTOR program operational as soon as possible the first phase called for 28 of the
original WW2 Chain Home stations to be brought back into commission
as a stop gap, this included Ventnor.
Ventnor was also selected to take part in Phase 2 of the program
and would house a new Centimetic Early Warning radar.
This new radar system needed to be situated at least a 100 feet above sea level whilst also being located relatively close to the coast,
, this made RAF Ventnor an ideal location as the high position of the station
enabled the radar to have an uninterrupted sweep of the coast.
A large underground operations room was also constructed to protect the radio operators
and monitoring equipment, the entrance for this new underground bunker
was hidden beneath a guardhouse disguised as a bungalow.
Inside of the bungalow was a vertical shaft which lead down to a long inclined passageway,
ROTOR bunkers were built to a uniformed specification based on the type of radar used at the site,
Ventnor was built to the “R1 “ specification
a single level structure situated approximately 40ft below the ground and heavily armoured
by up to 12 feet thick, reinforced concrete.
To the left of the entrance corridor is a gated transformer room
Opposite the transformer room on the right of the corridor is a small ladder,
the ladder leads up to a pair of shafts where cables from the radars above ground
would have been run into the operations room below.
You can see here a ladder up to the surface entrance which has been capped with concrete.
At the end of the entrance corridor is a set of blast doors
these doors would have been the final protective barrier of the bunker, each door is made from
reinforced tank steel and each weighs approximately 1 ½ tons
The bunker was designed to withstand a near miss from the largest known conventional bombs of the time
although it was never designed to survive a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.
Construction of the bunker was a significant undertaking and work began in
February of 1952 to first dig out a very large 60ft deep hole.
The Island didn’t have the resources or a large enough skilled workforce to build such a structure
because of this many  of the materials and heavy machinery were bardged over from the mainland
and around 120 Irish labourers were brought across to help
with the excavation and construction of the bunker.
During its construction to up to 200 men would work on site with as many as 100 lorry
loads transported the materials required up and down the steep narrow downs road to the site.
The first room on the left leads through to what would have been the Radar office
the suspended wooden floor in this section of the bunker is extremely soft under foot
so you need to be extra careful not to fall through!
This room would have been filled with rows of radar equipment
you can make out the faint outline of the IOW on this window
and here we have a/this is tally board where casualties and damage of a local attack could logged
This is the Operations Room, to the right is a ladder that leads down
to a pit where the radar plotting projector would have been housed but unfortunately this is completely flooded out.
Construction of the underground control center was completed in November of 1952
1952 but the Type 80 radar that the ROTOR bunker was designed for wasn’t
handed over to the site until March of 1956
Due to this significant delay the radar was only operational for a  short 2-3 year period.
By this point intercontinental Ballistic Missles capable of carrying a nuclear payload had been developed,
these missiles flew too high to be detected by the type 80 radar and radar
technology it’s self had moved on making the site redundant.
 
We’re now leading through to the 'plant' room.
. It dosen’t have the false floors or ceilings of the other rooms and this is so that it could accommodate
the all cabling & large air conditioning equipment required for maintaining the bunker.
The RAF left the site in 1961 and the station was taken over by the Ministry of Aviation
for use as a radar and communications station for the Civil Aviation Authority.
The CAA didn’t need the R1 bunker and in 1962
it was refurbished and leased to the Isle of Wight council.
The Council repurposed the R1 to be used as a County Control Centre
from where the Islands emergency services would have been administered in the event of a nuclear attack.
The control centre would be staffed with people from within the council and service providing organisations.
The bunker staff would have been tasked with looking after casualties,
burying the dead, coordinating food supplies, housing the homeless
and maintaining law and order. The bunker remained operational in this capacity
up until the end of the cold war in 1991
Towards the back of the bunker is a second set of blast doors, which lead through to the
main air intake ventilation shaft and up to the emergency exit.
On the left of the emergency exit corridor is a gated room which houses
the air washing system which in the event of fallout would suck in and filter the air from above.
On the right of the corridor is pump room and sewage extractor
The sump is partially flooded but you can just about make out the pumps below water level.
The emergency exit is up seven flights of steel stairs,
The emergency exit hatch was the point of entry for the explorers who gained entry back in 2008
and after it’s discovery this was filled in with rubble
which you can see here
When the council ceased operations the bunker was then handed back to the CAA
who decided they had no further use for it. The guardhouse, air vents and the emergency exit tower were all demolished
the cable shafts capped with concrete and buried leaving
no trace of the site above ground.
It’s a massive shame that such an interesting and historically important part of the Islands past has ended up
in this neglected and forgotten state, I was lucky enough to be able to visit the site
a couple of times between 2016 and 2017 and even within that
relatively short period of time the bunker had noticeably deteriated further.
It looks as though the bunker has been leaking for a number of years which has resulted in it slowly filling up.
This incredibly damp environment makes walking across the
suspended wooden floors dangerous
**** "I'm okay"
as they have either bowed out or rotted to the point of giving way under foot.
Most of the bunker is coated in a build up of mould
and the doors and most of the remaining fixtures are extremely brittle.
Despite the current condition of the bunker when compared to other R1 sites
Ventnor doesn’t seem to be in too bad of a condition although I think it’s very unlikely
that anyone would come forward with the level of investment required to prevent the
bunker falling further into disrepair,
however, just pumping out of all the excess water, would go a long way to somewhat preserving the site for the future.
For more information on Ventnor Bunker I would highly recommend checking out the ventor radar website
http://www.ventnorradar.co.uk/
This website was massively useful whilst researching the bunker, and the author gives unique insight
into the site from someone who was stationed there.
I’d also recommend Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers by Nick McCamley
The book explains the ROTOR program in great detail and illustrates all the different types of bunkers used in this period.
Due to the dangerous condition of the bunker we have been careful not to leave
any clues of how we managed to access the site
and for now the bunker is once again safely sealed, but hopefully not forgotten.
Abandoned Isle of Wight - Nick Stotesbury 2020
