So after a good day of exploring in Folkestone with my boyfriend, we had a look at this place! It’s been on the list to do for ages but I’ve never got round to doing it. For me anything to do with the war fascinates me big time! This wasn’t a standard little war bunker explore either, it was better than expected for me. We was very unsure on the access to this but it’s clear this hasn’t been sealed for awhile. There is evidence of parties and rough sleepers here going by the mess they have left. If we was to enter into the bunker at the side of the concrete monolith we would’ve had to of climbed a huge metal door, however we found a very small opening on the other side. Inside this bunker there is an upper room containing a ventilation plant and rusting filter drums. There are some grotty toilets, next to the toilets there is a short corridor (passage) with steps that lead down into the bunker. The main sections consists of several rooms at an angle to the passage, two either side, with internal walls tiled with rectangular panels. The walls are painted a beautiful ochre colour. An escape tunnel leads back to the road at the end of the two largest rooms, running parallel to the main tunnel, and there is a second bank of toilets. At the end of the escape tunnel, is how we got in. We tried getting in as subtly as possible but that was literally the most hardest thing ever. None the less a really interesting explore!
History -
The Road of Remembrance, originally Slope Road, was renamed in the early 1920s in memory of the several million First World War servicemen who had passed down it as they marched from basic training at Shorncliffe Camp on their way to the harbour and embarkation for the continent. Near the bottom of the road though is a strange concrete structure, a survival from two decades later and now one of the country’s oddest remnants of Second World War brutalist architecture. Where other bunkers strive to be unobtrusive, this tries to hide in plain sight by disguising itself as an upended biscuit box. But this roughly-built concrete structure with its blank square face is just the entrance and service end, and the important part, comprising several vaulted rooms, lies further back, buried deep into the cliff face behind. The structure appears to have been built at a later stage of the war, based on a message from the Vice Admiral at Dover in October 1942 describing arrangements made to build an underground structure containing a telephone exchange and a small control room. The estimated cost of the project was given as £1000 and the construction period three months. Unusually for a secret bunker, it is believed to have been built by Otto Marx builders, a local firm also responsible for two other bunkers on the Leas, one of which was reputedly destroyed by a German bomb before the concrete had completely set. Using non-service contractors rather than say, the Royal Engineers, may have been a necessary relaxation of normal procedures due to manpower shortages.
History -
The Road of Remembrance, originally Slope Road, was renamed in the early 1920s in memory of the several million First World War servicemen who had passed down it as they marched from basic training at Shorncliffe Camp on their way to the harbour and embarkation for the continent. Near the bottom of the road though is a strange concrete structure, a survival from two decades later and now one of the country’s oddest remnants of Second World War brutalist architecture. Where other bunkers strive to be unobtrusive, this tries to hide in plain sight by disguising itself as an upended biscuit box. But this roughly-built concrete structure with its blank square face is just the entrance and service end, and the important part, comprising several vaulted rooms, lies further back, buried deep into the cliff face behind. The structure appears to have been built at a later stage of the war, based on a message from the Vice Admiral at Dover in October 1942 describing arrangements made to build an underground structure containing a telephone exchange and a small control room. The estimated cost of the project was given as £1000 and the construction period three months. Unusually for a secret bunker, it is believed to have been built by Otto Marx builders, a local firm also responsible for two other bunkers on the Leas, one of which was reputedly destroyed by a German bomb before the concrete had completely set. Using non-service contractors rather than say, the Royal Engineers, may have been a necessary relaxation of normal procedures due to manpower shortages.