Winston Churchill War Rooms

A few weeks ago we visited the Churchill War Rooms and Museum. At the start of World War II, Winston Churchill had secure rooms secretly constructed under the vast government buildings of the Treasury behind Downing Street. 


"In 1940, shortly after becoming Prime Minister, Churchill stood in the War Cabinet Room and declared: 'This is the room from which I will direct the war'. Today, you can step back in time to explore the secret headquarters where Churchill and his staff changed the course of history." -- Time Out London

The entrance to the Churchill War Rooms is an unobtrusive doorway just by the Horeseguards parade ground at one end of St James Park, with Buckingham Palace just in view at the other end of the park. As you go down the steps, you’re entering the war rooms just as they were during the period of the Second World War between 1938 when war was threatening until the war ended in 1945. This is the place where large numbers of people worked on secret war operations and where Churchill met with his cabinet and Chiefs of Staff. With bombs falling in the Blitz throughout London, the only thing keeping the war rooms safe was initially it’s secret position although later a reinforced concrete ceiling was installed to keep it safe from bomb damage.  Right until the end of the war there was no sign that the Nazi's ever knew of the war rooms existence.  Even the british people didn't know of its existence until after the war was done and the people who worked in the war rooms started telling storys about them.  When the war ended they simply locked the war rooms up, without removing anything, or changing anything, and they were reopened as a museum some time later due to public request. 

This entrance into the war rooms didn't exist during the war.

The people who worked in the war rooms were requested to also sleep in the war rooms.  And because the war rooms were deep underground they didn't have any natural lite or direct access to the outside.  One of the workers devised this signage to let people know what is occurring outside.  Apparently the sign would simply say "windy" when active bombing was occurring.

In the middle of the tour, there is a separate area called the Winston Churchill museum which is and interactive museum dedicated to the life story of Churchill.

This was a  really cool interactive touch table with the chronology of events in Churchill's life.

He seams to have been quite a colourful character...

Back to the War Rooms tour... The actual maps used by the ministers to wage war are still on the wall where they were at the end of the war.

One the map shown above is even a satirical doodle of Hitler done by one of the ministers.

This photos shows the steel and concrete they installed in 1940 above the war rooms.  It includes a heavy steel deck with about a metre of concrete poured on top.

They also thought the stairwell from the building above was a weak point into the war rooms making it more susceptible to damage from bombing, so they simply filled the base of the stair, and an adjacent office, solid with concrete! For the purposes of the museum, the cored through this concrete to allow passage through.

This photo shows the original brick walls and how the concrete was just poured in using the brick as the formwork.

These maps were in the map room, where the british tracked all ship movements and the advance of the axis and allied forces.  All of the tacks, notes and strings are still in the same spot as they were when the war ended.

This close up shows the Eastern coast of Canada and USA.  If you enlarge the photos you can see thousands of little holes in the map where ships left Canadian ports carrying soldiers and supplies for the war.

This is Churchills private bedroom.  It is between the communication room and the map room.  He has all the comforts he would need, but rumour has it he only took naps here and maybe slept one night here. He preferred to sleep in his apartment directly above the war rooms at 10 Annex street, regardless of the militaries warnings. He also like to go to the roof top of the building during the air raids to watch the bombs fall.

It's amazing how many museums are dedicated to war in London. Recently we also went to the National Army Museum (they have a great play place for the kids oddly enough!). That museum is also really interesting showing the long history of fighting and war Britain has been through. Some them not as heroic as others including the colonization of many countries and then World War I & II. It was interesting to see how London lived through the bombings and air raids in WWII. The museum had props constructed into the Picadilly tube station (one of the many tube stations used for shelter during the war), where families would take shelter down in the underground tube stations to get away from the bombing. 

This is No. 10 Downing Street, the next street over from 10 Annex street where the war rooms are under. No. 10 Downing street is the UK equivalent of Sussex Street or the White House.  You can't get very close, but the entrance is just down the lane.

Jenn and Mike