Haunting of Churchill Museum and Cabinet War RoomsBeneath the streets of Westminster in London lies a vast labyrinth of rooms and passages which was the war time hub of the British defence.
Beneath the streets of Westminster in London, there lies a vast labyrinth of rooms and passages, whose origins go back to 1938 when conflict with Nazi Germany was becoming more and more likely. Anticipating that conflict would include extended assaults from the air, army strategists set about making plans for an underground shelter from which the Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff may direct operations.
A suite of storerooms beneath a government building in Whitehall was made fit for purpose, and on Sunday, 27 August 1939, one week before the outbreak of World War II, the Cabinet War Rooms was operational. For the following six years, secure from falling bombs by way of concrete 1.5m (5ft) thick, an army of civil servants, government ministers, military strategists and even, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, lived a troglodyte existence, waging a round the clock war on Germany.
One of the first rooms to greet guests these days is the Cabinet War Room. "This is the room from which I will lead the war", Winston Churchill declared when he visited it for the first time in May 194O. At first, however, he was not particularly in favour of skulking underground, preferring as an alternative to lead from the thick of the action above ground.
On 14 October 1940, an enormous bomb damaged 10 Downing Street and fell uncomfortably close to the underground War Rooms. "Pity it wasn't a little closer so that we might have tested our defences," Churchill observed nonchalantly.
The next day, the War Cabinet met in the underground War Room, and over the following 5 years held no fewer than 115 additional meetings there. However, Churchill continued to insist on being in the thick of the action and, when the bombs began falling, he would exasperate those charged with his protection by hurrying to the roof of the building above to look at the destruction first-hand.
For the ordinary men and women who worked here, conditions were cramped and amenities minimal. There was no sewage system, so occupants had to make do with chemical toilets and chamber pots while washing facilities consisted of buckets and bowls. Vermin, such as rats and mice, had been an ever-present nuisance, and the fact that the smoking ban in the workplace lay some 60 years in the future meant that people went about their duties immersed in a fog of cigarette and cigar smoke.
In August 1945, with the war over, the lighting in the War Rooms was switched off for the first time in six years, the doors were locked and the massive bunker fell silent.
Since the 1980s, the warren of corridors and cramped rooms has been open to the general public. As they have been preserved more or less precisely as they were throughout the War, you get the eerie sense that the uniformed men and women of the war years have simply nipped out for a tea break and will probably be back at any second.
It is a spot where time stands still - all of the clocks are frozen at 4.58 pm, the time at which the War Cabinet met right here for the first time on 15 October 1940. Yet the hands of one of the clocks have been known to move mysteriously to another time, and nobody has ever discovered why.
Many workers at the War Rooms these days complain of feelings of unease, while phantom cigarette smoke was once smelt. Spectral footfall is from time to time heard echoing along the corridors, and the imprint of a military-style boot has now and again appeared on the freshly waxed floors.
For some of those dedicated men and women who confronted the might of Nazi Germany from deep underneath the streets of Westminster, it might seem that the war still goes on.
