For sale: A labyrinth of bombproof tunnels hidden about 30m beneath central London. Great location, mysterious past. And the price tag? Well, that’s a secret.
The Kingsway Tunnels, originally built in 1942 to protect Londoners from German air raids, are being put for sale by their current owner, telecommunications company BT Group PLC.
“We’re looking for a purchaser with the imagination and stature to return the tunnels to productive use,” said Elaine Hewitt, who heads BT’s property division. “The site has a fantastic history and, now that we have no requirement for it for telecommunications use, it is right that we should offer it to the market. Here’s hoping it has a fantastic future as well.”
The tunnels, which are about 1km long, were taken over by Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6 in 1944. The Guardian newspaper said a section of the spy agency known as the Inter Services Research Bureau used the tunnels until May 8, 1945, when it stripped them clean, leaving a question mark over the exact nature of its underground activities.
BT said the tunnels were then used by the government’s Public Record Office to store some 363 tonnes of “highly sensitive documents” before the tunnels became the property of Britain’s Post Office — which at the time ran Britain’s telephone network and used the site as a telephone exchange to connect long distance calls.
It was through this reinforced warren that the 1960s hot line connecting the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union was routed.
By the 1980s, when it became the property of BT, it housed secure data backup services and served closed circuit TV cameras.
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