"Secret Base" locations revealed – Part 5 of 5

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The 1999 "GCHQ / BT / BNFL Capenhurst" story

Permalink In Summer 1999, Duncan Campbell helped to break to an astonished world an original investigation by Richard Lamont which revealed that GCHQ had hidden top secret telephone intercept equipment within a curious tower on the site of British Nuclear Fuels Limited's (BNFL) uranium enrichment plant at Capenhurst, Cheshire. The tower (pictured below), which looked like a cross between an industrial chimney and a children's helter-skelter without the slide, was over 150ft tall and was built in the late 1980s. The Capenhurst Tower was installed by GCHQ to scoop up all telecommunications between the UK and the Irish Republic from 1989 until 1998. The microwave beam from the BT cable under the Irish Sea, originated at BT's microwave towers at Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey.

It continued through the BT towers at Gwaenysgor near Prestatyn in North Wales, Pale Heights near Kelsall in Cheshire on the edge of Delamere Forest and at Sutton Common near Macclesfield, Cheshire. It then joined up with the rest of the network down to the world famous landmark BT Tower in London (further below).

It was noticed that by fluke, the microwave beam between the Gwaenysgor and Pale Heights towers also went right through the BNFL Capenhurst site and so bingo. GCHQ were in business. Try joining the dots on a map (further below) to see what I mean.

The tower was crammed with electronic eavesdropping equipment on many floors. It was fitted with special dielectric windows which didn't allow light in, but which allowed microwave transmissions to pass through. The microwave beam was broken down into individual telephone channels and the conversations were fed into Echelon computers which scutinised them for "hot" keywords and "watched" telephone numbers. It has been suggested that the tower was also fitted with satellite communications equipment on the top floor, so that all the data could be passed on to Menwith Hill and GCHQ in Cheltenham for further detailed analysis.

It is thought that neither BT nor BNFL were actually aware of the GCHQ workers' activities right under their noses. Indeed it has been reported that GCHQ operatives even brought the equipment to the site in vehicles dressed in BT livery.

After the telecoms system for the Irish Republic was changed, the Capenhurst Tower was then made redundant anyway and GCHQ had to make other arrangements. The tower was finally demolished in 2004 but it is pictured in the centre of the aerial photo below, which was shot by Getmapping in 1999.

For the definitive account of the original research and investigation into the GCHQ Tower at BNFL Capenhurst, visit Richard Lamont's website:-

• www.lamont.me.uk/capenhurst/

GCHQ Irton Moor, Scarborough / Project Omega and GCHQ Bude

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New Google Earth imagery reveals major expansion at GCHQ Scarborough

Another very important spy centre can be found at the unassuming location of Irton Moor, near the quaint seaside town of Scarborough. Back bench MPs in successive governments have failed gloriously in trying to find out precisely what goes on at this base, which MI5/6 operatives refer to as simply "Scarborough".

The 1:25000 OS map gives the full detail and labels it with the rather romantic title "Wireless Station". It dates back to the very early pre-WWII days of GCHQ, when that was known as the Government Codes and Ciphers School (GC&CS). Irton Moor is sometimes referred to as a Composite Signals Organisation (CSO) station.

Irton Moor spy base opened in 1943 on the site of the old Scarborough Racecourse. It replaced an earlier naval wireless station at nearby Sandybed Lane in Falsgrove, which is where St. Augustine's Roman Catholic School is now sited. In 1941, the Sandybed station intercepted secret signals between the German battleship The Bismarck and its HQ in Berlin. This enabled its position to be calculated and British forces then attacked. Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a personal message of thanks to the Sandybed staff for their efforts that contributed so greatly towards sinking The Bismarck.

In the 1980s and 1990s, GCHQ Irton Moor was upgraded significantly and the Bird's Eye view below reveals a new hardened underground bunker on the base's north east side.

On Google Street View imagery from 2011, you can spot a military mobile microwave communications van parked outside the main gate. This is a Mercedes Benz van with a microwave dish attachment and telescope mounting pole on view. But you can't see what's hidden behind those rear doors. It is likely to be based at a Royal Signals Establishment and was no doubt at Scarborough being kitted out with equipment for test and/or deployment.

During 2016, the GCHQ Scarborough site is being significantly expanded under Project Omega. This involves provision of a new visitor reception centre, vehicle inspection bay, delivered goods store, guardhouse kiosk, vehicle entrance and exit points, and parking facilities.

The purpose of the scheme is to provide modern and secure facilities for receiving visitors to the site, consolidated in one location to the south of the existing main buildings. The scheme incorporates the visitor reception building with meeting rooms and office space, plus internal traffic management and parking facilities for staff and visitors. All documents for the planning application can be downloaded (63Mb ZIP) from Cryptome.

Before leaving the bracing Scarborough seaside air behind, take a look at some "farmers' fields" a few miles to the south of the Irton Moor spy base. Click on the OS 1:50000 scale map of the location (pictured below) to zoom into the fields. Click again to try the more detailed 1:25000 map and keep on clicking to check out the aerial photos.

What emerges from those fields turns out to be RAF Staxton Wold, claimed to be the oldest radar facility in the world. Today, it still forms a key part of the UK's airspace defence network. If you want an even closer look, the main gate to the radar site sits right on the path of the famous Yorkshire Wolds Way walking route.

Another old UK airspace defence radar site hiding in farmers' fields can be spotted in Norfolk at RAF Neatishead, near the popular Norfolk Broads town of Wroxham.

Still in the North East of England, most people in the area will be familiar with the helicopter search and rescue (SAR) base at RAF Boulmer near the historic town of Alnwick in Northumberland.

However, take a step back, consult the 1:25000 map (pictured below) and consider the little village of Lesbury just south west of the helicopter SAR base. On the northern outskirts of the village, you'll stumble upon yet another of those high security SIGINT enclaves that you'll now be an expert in spotting.

The Lesbury site houses one of the United Kingdom's Air Surveillance and Control System (ASACS) Centres and also the RAF's School of Fighter Control. An additional Remote Radar Head (RRH) is located high up on Alnwick Moor at Brizlee Wood (also pictured below).

If you travel north on the trains along the east coast main line between London King's Cross and Edinburgh, the big white radome at the centre of the Lesbury SIGINT site can be spotted high up on the hill over to the right, as you pass through Alnmouth Station.

But the Boulmer ASACS facility also has two remote outposts nearby that are much harder to spot from the train windows. They are the UHF/VHF transmitter and receiver stations at High Buston near Shilbottle, to enable Boulmer controllers to communicate with intercept aircraft from within their bunker underneath the Lesbury countryside. Look a little to the north of the Boulmer UHF/VHF transmitter station and you'll see a hill called Spy Law.

Further north on the same train journey, look out to the right again for another radome alongside the train tracks – this time at the "disused airfield" at Brunton. This signals unit liaises with the Electronic Counter Measures and Warfare Tactics Test Range at RAF Spadeadam.

A similar Remote Radar Head also performing an ASACS role can be found at RAF Trimingham at Beacon Hill near Cromer on the Norfolk coast (pictured below in one of my exclusive Pilot's Eye Views). It is a very old radar station originally dating back to 1941 and is now connected into the air defence network between Boulmer and Neatishead.

Following on from Irton Moor, the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO) has two other important outposts. One is on the rugged coastline of Cornwall, just south of Morwenstow at Lower Sharpnose Point near Bude. This "Wireless Station" provides extra intercept capability for GCHQ. Go to Multimap's site to view the aerial photo of GCHQ/CSO Morwenstow. In more recent years, the intercept station has been renamed GCHQ Bude and a new Torus SATCOM [PDF, 5.7MB] (satellite communications) antenna has been built at the south east corner, next to the main security gate.

The other CSO site is deep inside English cider country, south of Taunton, Somerset, at the tiny hamlet of Culmhead near Churchstanton and has been apparently closed down. Again, this "Wireless Station" has provided additional intercept capacity for GCHQ. Go to Multimap's site to view the aerial photo of GCHQ/CSO Culmhead. Most of the aerial mast assemblies at Culmhead have now been removed but it is believed that a few remotely controlled listening antennae remain. The address search facility on the Royal Mail website discreetly lists the secret base as simply "Cipher House, Culmhead, Taunton".

Cipher House and other buildings in the centre of the Culmhead SIGINT site have now been converted into the Culmhead Business Centre. One company operating from there is an inkjet printer cartridge supplier. All the CSO sites at Irton Moor, Morwenstow and Culmhead have been inextricably entwined with the US Government's NSA.

Before leaving that scenery in the South West of England, consider the airbase at RAF St. Mawgan near Newquay in Cornwall. This base is under threat of closure due to defence budget reviews which would also impact on Newquay's civilian airport next door, which relies on the military presence for fire cover and air traffic control.

RAF St. Mawgan has a major Cold War secret hidden underground in a huge bunker network, partially camouflaged by the airbase's secondary runway routes. The OS 1:50000 map of the area (pictured further below) shows nothing of particular significance but the 1:25000 series map shows some mysteriously empty fields. The 1:10000 map, courtesy of the Government's MAGIC service, reveals the true detail including what appears to be a blast door entrance to a bunker.

Further research reveals an interesting entry under RAF St. Mawgan's post code of "TR8 4HP" – an address simply listed as "JMF". The modern aerial photos corresponding to that address entry, seem to confirm the position of the bunker blast door entrance.

Click on the map image below to zoom into the highlighted area and you'll be presented with RAF St. Mawgan's Joint Maritime Facility (JMF) – a huge underground US/UK Navy "listening" bunker, which has been responsible for tracking submarines and surface ships out in the North Atlantic ocean. The JMF is sometimes also referred to as the Terminal Exchange Building (TEB).

Another interesting address entry for that post code is "US Navy Weapons Facility", whose position is marked at the base's high security entrance on the south side of the runways.

Another Cold War US Naval Facility, similar to RAF St. Mawgan's JMF, tracking Atlantic ship and submarine movements, was until 1995 based on the Pembrokeshire heritage coastline in South Wales next to RAF/RNAS Brawdy. That old Royal Navy Air Station (RNAS) at Brawdy is now described on OS maps as a "disused airfield". It is no surprise therefore that the base still has significant military presence, now in the form of the Army's Electronic Warfare Unit – No. 14 Signals Regiment at Cawdor Barracks.

Since the US Navy's departure from the tracking station at Brawdy, their site has been turned into the Brawdy Business Park. The site's buildings have been rented out to various small businesses. The US Navy's large high security Terminal Building (allegedly fitted with "electromagnetic eavesdropping" counter measures) has apparently been cleared of all its technical equipment and has been renamed St. Davids House – earmarked for future development.

Cold War nuclear command bunkers get a new lease of life

PermalinkAdam and Ben Laurie have transformed their telecoms company into The Bunker™, which provides a secure data centre underground. The RAF Ash facility is utilised to keep their clients' sensitive data safe from natural disaster and also terrorism threats such as TEMPEST and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack, as described in one of my UK Secrets series of articles for Eye Spy Magazine. Clients are likely to include airlines, banks and government departments in many countries worldwide, not just the UK.

It is strategically located on the crossroads of the main Internet fibre routes leaving the UK for Europe, Asia and the USA. The corporate brochure warns that while London is the second largest Internet exchange, it is also one of the highest risk locations in the world. The brochure's tagline is, "London – not if, but when". In a massive expansion programme, in late 2008 they applied to Dover District Council seeking planning permission for a major upgrade in the form of another data centre to be built on site during 2009.

As revealed in the truly stunning documents on the council's website, the development is to be in several low profile modules to the south east of the old underground RAF facility. However, it will be above ground with offices in upper floors and the data server racks in the basement. It will be blended into the landscape with earth mounding and grass roofs. English Heritage has negotiated the retention of some historical features such as a radar tower from the Cold War era.

• https://planning.dover.gov.uk/online-applications/
  applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=DCAPR_210363

Whilst AL Digital's primary data centres are at the RAF Ash site [PDF, 1MB], another one is situated in the hardened nuclear command and control bunker within the former USAF/RAF Greenham Common airbase [PDF, 1MB] near Newbury in Berkshire, most of which has been converted into the New Greenham Park industrial estate. Many other internet providers now use the facility too.

In an exciting development soaked in sweet irony, from May 2009 until August 2017 this Secret Bases website was professionally hosted within it. Since September 2017, Secret Bases has been hosted in my own office on a private server, sending encrypted content to browsers over HTTPS. Incidentally, right next door at Greenham, you can still spot the old Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) Alert and Maintenance Area (GAMA) - specially constructed silos designed to (hopefully) withstand both nuclear and conventional direct strikes.

Yet another ex-MoD bunker in a "safe" rural location at RAF Bawdsey, an old radar station near Woodbridge and Felixstowe in Suffolk, was also purchased by AL Digital and considered for use as a third "server farm", but the current status of this is unclear. Check out some Pilot's Eye views taken by my specialist contributor in October 2007 further below.

Significantly, Adam's and Ben's father Peter Laurie is the author of the classic 1970s book "Beneath the City Streets". Yes, you guessed right, it details secret Cold War nuclear bunkers and emergency Government crisis control centres.

In 2005, Symantec – the world's leading Internet security company, famed for its anti-virus software – acquired an old decommissioned Cold War nuclear command bunker 50 miles south west of London in the Hampshire countryside and established its European Security Operations Centre (SOC). It played a key part in providing Symantec's global monitoring services and also supported the company's European managed services customers.

As explained in a special feature in the Guardian newspaper and in a detailed report plus photo gallery on ZDNET.com, teams of security analysts worked 12-hour shifts sitting at computer screens, monitoring global security vulnerabilities (viruses, worms and trojans, etc.) and also keeping an eye on TV news feeds for relevant political stories.

The Symantec SOC bunker (pictured below in a special Bird's Eye aerial photo) can be found in a field alongside a single track road, Watley Lane, which heads south east out of the village of Twyford between Winchester and Southampton. A huge underground reservoir is immediately adjacent, operated by Southern Water.

In stark contrast to this secluded rural location, consider Symantec's UK headquarters just outside London on a brand new technology park alongside the M4 motorway at Reading in Berkshire, next to the football club's Madejski Stadium.

In June 2007, in a surprising news development, Symantec announced that it had actually already outgrown its Twyford bunker and had relocated UK SOC operations to the new Reading HQ site. The Twyford bunker was then advertised on the open market by land operators Southern Water in a glossy brochure [PDF, 520KB] by sales agents Turner and Partners. However, the bunker was suddenly removed from the February 2008 auction when a mystery buyer approached Southern Water privately.

Five other Symantec SOCs are located around the world in Sydney, Tokyo, Munich and two in USA: one at San Antonio in Texas and one within Symantec's main offices at 2800 Eisenhower Avenue, Alexandria, Virginia.

Another former top secret UK Cold War Regional Government Headquarters (RGHQ), hidden deep inside a bunker underneath the Lincolnshire Wolds near Skegness, got a fascinating new lease of life in Summer 2005 following two years of refurbishment work. As reported by BBC News at the time of the sale in 2003, the decommissioned emergency command bunker – for use by military chiefs of staff and Government officials in the event of nuclear war – was snapped-up for £400,000 by a specialist computer data security company, Centrinet, with its global operations centre in Lincoln. If the bunker had been built today from scratch, the cost would have easily exceeded £20 million.

Centrinet's main HQ is located on a brand new industrial park in Lincoln, yet to appear on many maps. However, the "secret" location of their TEMPEST-proof secure data bunker has been revealed to be the old Cold War RGHQ at RAF Skendleby, between the towns of Spilsby and Alford. It is now known as SmartBunker™ – "the most secure data centre in the United Kingdom"

The only things at ground level to give the game away are the substantial fence surrounding the site, the tall communications mast and the classic "bungalow" style guard room, containing a blast door entrance to the bunker access tunnel. Adding to the intrigue is a surface mound, dotted with air intakes and exhaust outlets, plus the original WWII ROTOR radar installation next door, all shown in pictures below.

Scotland's Secret Bunker can be found masquerading as a farmhouse at Troywood in Fife's East Neuk between St. Andrews, Anstruther and Crail and it is now marked on maps a little more discreetly as "Museum". You can view the Troywood location in a stunning close-up of Getmapping's aerial photography (shown right, reduced) by using Windows Live Local. It shows the guardhouse entrance (now used for the Cold War museum) and you can even make out the earth mound covering the bunker and the air intakes and emergency exit on the surface.

Virgin on the ridiculous!

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Also in this section:–
NSA Menwith Hill fibre optic feed from GTT (Hibernia) Networks – scroll down

With everyone in the UK desperate to get a fast broadband internet connection, Virgin Media have gone to extraordinary lengths to install their switching gear in more and more bizarre locations. In particular, consider the south west cities of Bath and Bristol.

You can find communications equipment lurking in old churches and mission halls. Have a look at the abandoned congregational chapel at Bloomfield Road / Frome Road in Odd Down, Bath across from the still active Rush Hill United Reformed Church. Before the communications plant was installed, the chapel had been used as a furniture depository.

Then check out the old mission hall next to the Page Institute on Soundwell Road in Staple Hill, Bristol. Also in Staple Hill, very close to the mission hall, a more expected location is the 1960s civil defence HQ on Morley Road. In the 1970s it was used by the Soundwell Technical College as an annexe.

Up in Manchester, at the main lodge entrance to the huge Southern Cemetery on Barlow Moor Road, you can find data plant machinery piping broadband to customers from within former public toilets. Talk about flushing buffers!

In Scotland's Perth city centre, on the corner of Canal Street and Speygate, you can find Virgin Media's equipment inside the building containing the Roca Blu cocktail bar and function rooms.

In comparison to these oddities, a more traditional broadband switching centre is on the Eagles Wood Business Park adjacent to the M5 J15 / M4 J20 Almondsbury motorway junction near Bradley Stoke, Bristol.

My findings were covered in technology news website The Register in January 2018.

My exclusive Menwith Hill / GTT Hibernia revelations (further below) were featured in The Register in August 2019.

• More on NSA Menwith Hill
• NSA Digby – GCHQ Lincoln

Secret Data Centres

including GCHQ's Tempora and NSA's PRISM projects

Permalink Perhaps with greater significance in our everyday lives, underground bunkers are also used by huge banking corporations to store backups of customer records and daily financial transactions. One magnificent example can be found between Sheffield and Barnsley in the former mining community of Tankersley. Take a look at HSBC's (formerly Midland Bank) South Yorkshire National/Group Data Centre (SYNDC/SYGDC) within Tankersley's Wentworth Business Park.

The secure ring-fenced hardened computer centre – completed back in 1981 at a cost of £40 million – is mostly hidden underground with just the surface entrances showing. The numerous ventilation funnels surrounding the site have led the locals to nickname it "Teletubbyland", as they resemble the voice trumpets on the children's TV show. It can be seen on Google Earth at high resolution but even better, it is available on Windows Live Local as a superb Bird's Eye view (shown further below). Still in Yorkshire, another example can be found built into a hillside between Halifax and Sowerby Bridge. It is known as the Halifax Bank of Scotland's (HBOS) Copley Data Centre.

Take a look near junction 31 of the M62 at Normanton near Wakefield. There's plenty going on around the north side of the village of Ackton. One site at Loscoe Lane roundabout off Havertop Lane is earmarked for the state-of-the-art replacement Divisional HQ for West Yorkshire Police, while another off Premier Way North is the new Northern Data Centre for the global secure financial operations of HSBC. The data centre, which was approaching completion in Summer 2009, includes a massive server hall (250 metres long by 100 metres wide), two dedicated electricity sub-stations, two DRUPS (Diesel Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supplies), underground fuel tanks and an Argonite fire suppression equipment storage building.

Meanwhile, in 2009 HSBC opened a new data centre "at a secret location in suburban North London", according to various trade journals and technology news websites. However, I can exclusively reveal that it has been constructed on the old Glaxo Smith Kline Beecham site at what is now known as Quadrant Park, Mundells, Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire.

Tragically during construction in November 2008, the HSBC Hertfordshire Data Centre cost one man his life and caused many others serious injuries when a cylinder of Argonite gas exploded and shot around the building like a missile, destroying everything in its path. The Health and Safety Executive issued three prohibition notices on Crown House Data Solutions (a division of construction company Laing O'Rourke) for serious breaches of statutory safety standards.

HSBC was poised to start construction of a £300 million northern data centre at Vangarde Business Park, Monks Cross, Huntington, York after receiving formal planning permission in May 2009. Again, all the detailed drawings were there on the council website for all to see. Due to the economic downturn, the project was suddenly halted in December 2009, to the dismay of the city's business leaders.

The German specialists e-Shelter are developing what will be Europe's second largest data centre campus – behind their own Frankfurt site – just a stone's throw from RAF High Wycombe's Strike Command bunker, north west of Saunderton Station at Bledlow Ridge. The former Molins cigarette machinery factory (which was previously a WWII munitions works) on Haw Lane has been demolished. In its place will be four data centre halls which will be grass covered to blend in with the surrounding fields. Another new data centre campus is well underway at the Broadoaks Estate in West Byfleet, Surrey. It is within the grounds of a manor house which was used by the MoD's Defence Operational Analysis Establishment (DOAE) from 1965 until 1996.

Think of Brimble Hill at Burderop near Wroughton Airfield, on the outskirts of Swindon, Wiltshire. Such a quaint sounding place and yet it was once the site of a USAF military hospital. After World War Two, the twenty buildings of the USAF facility were put to use by the UK Government for "psychiatric research" and subsequently an NHS Mental Health Unit. But even that's gone now. In its place? Not one but two huge data centres with impressive security systems.

The Brimble Hill, Burderop data centre site was specially built in the 1990s for Woolwich Building Society operating under the name NuDelta. In 2001, the NuDelta server engineers were made redundant when Barclays took over the operations and consolidated their activities at their own data centre in Gloucester. Later, Compaq moved in and extended the facilities and since Compaq were acquired by Hewlett Packard, it has been used as a key part of HP's data server infrastructure.

Hewlett Packard operates another massive data centre campus at Broadland Business Park in Thorpe St. Andrew, east of Norwich, which was originally built in 2007 for Norwich Union.

In November 2010, the Government announced plans to destroy all data and equipment associated with the cancelled National ID Card Scheme. The special Ministry of Defence grade secure data centre which was geared up to run the project is owned and operated by famous French defence contractor Thales. It is sited just a short drive from Junction 3 on the M18 at Doncaster, on the corner of White Rose Way, Carolina Way and Wisconsin Drive.

Verizon UK Backbone – but what of GCHQ's Tempora and NSA's PRISM?

Throughout 2013 and 2014, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden published ever fascinating and worrying revelations about the US and UK secret intelligence agencies. He revealed the existence, code-names and functional scope of top secret classified data gathering projects operated by the USA's NSA (PRISM) but also the UK's GCHQ (Tempora). This was coupled with a scandal concerning US government spying on Verizon's telephone customers using the MAINWAY database.

Verizon UK has an internet backbone data centre (a core POP, Point-of-Presence) on an industrial park in a town in north west England adjacent to the interchange of two motorways. The warehouse – initially speculatively built as a freight distribution centre – was leased for 25 years from 1999 and kitted out when Verizon was known as MCI Worldcom. Next door are a motel and a furniture store's home shopping delivery unit. It is also connected to another Verizon Backbone POP in Thames Valley in the south of England.

Another major Verizon UK data centre can be found in central London adjacent to a very busy train hub (and a controversial biohazard research laboratory); another is next to a former warehouse in a city in south west England, which until recently was used as a studio for BBC TV's medicated soap opera Casualty. In Scotland, one is hidden behind and beneath a former Victorian bonded warehouse on the banks of the Clyde – now known as the Pentagon; another on an industrial estate in a West Yorkshire city, next door to a company called FBI. I'm not joking.

If you fancy venturing to Land's End (almost), you can find a rather space age looking Verizon data centre in amongst farms and cottages, on the former site of holiday chalets for Cornwall's surfers. Now it caters for a rather different sort of surfer. It connects to the undersea Internet cables joining the UK to the rest of the world.

Google's Street View scene of the Verizon northern POP shows a mobile hot food van parked outside with its owner enjoying a tea break at a patio table, blissfully unaware of the global importance of the building behind her. So does the building have additional equipment installed by those Cheltenham cheeky chappies, GCHQ? Looking through the prism, only tempora will tell.

Bletchley's Data Centre Enigma

Some companies go to extraordinary lengths to hide their servers in "ordinary" buildings. Consider First Avenue in Bletchley, Milton Keynes. Lots of very unimpressive buildings – a mixture of brick built factories and light industrial premises together with assorted offices. A typical example is the old Belsize Engineering building – now marketed by Bucks Biz Space as rented offices for start-up businesses. Close enough to London, but without the rates to go with a London address.

But take a peek around the back, viewed from the car park on Romar Court. A significantly refurbished rear part of the building has had its windows removed, replaced with louvres. The roof has been kitted out with vast amounts of pipework and air cooler machinery, hidden behind a false roof line screen.

Nuco Technologies, trading under numerous names including Host-IT, acquired part of the building in 2007 and set about transforming the shell into a data centre. So secret, that customers wishing to buy server rack space have to sign Non Disclosure Agreements not to reveal its location. Nuco / Host-IT boast on a blog detailing the project, that nobody would guess from the outside what the building really houses. But the pictures on the blog gave me very subtle but vital clues.

Bletchley's MK Datavault – Bank of England's backup facility

On the same industrial park in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, at the end of Third Avenue you will find a redevelopment site that was once Maxwell House, home to the infamous crooked bouncing Czech himself, Robert Maxwell. The old Maxwell House building has been flattened by demolition experts and a switchgear and twin transformer compound built right next to the West Coast train line. This is in readiness for a data centre complex named MK Datavault.

What the brochures won't brag is that upon completion, this data centre will be used by the Bank of England as its emergency backup facility. This key information was revealed in a document "Desktop Fibre Report" [PDF, 3MB], available online written by project consultants, Norman Disney and Young, when MK Datavault was known by the working title Project Enigma.

Other similar reports can be found for existing data centres at Thurrock, Essex [PDF, 2.5MB] and Perivale, Middlesex [PDF, 2.5MB] also considered for use by the Bank of England. The Bletchley site position is right next to the UK internet backbone and will give the Bank of England the important low-latency round trip times for data between here and the City of London.

RBS / NatWest Meltdown

In June 2012, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group (including NatWest and Ulster Bank), hit the headlines internationally when a simple routine "software update" caused meltdown – the effects of which were still being felt into July. Thank goodness that RBS data centres dotted around Edinburgh at its new headquarters at Gogarburn and at remote satellite sites at Macmerry and Dalkeith (further below) are more secure than the software. Melville Gate is on the site of a Roman Fort and the Macmerry facility is at one corner of the old airfield, sometimes also known as Penston or Tranent.

Vocalink: UK Banking Industry's BACS / LINK data centre in Harrogate

Tantalisingly close to the NSA's Menwith Hill spy centre for the global Echelon snooping network, the UK banking industry has a data centre for its BACS / LINK payment system, run by Vocalink. You can find it on a technology estate called Cardale Park on the western side of Harrogate. Close neighbours are the vast, ultra-high security Covance forensics laboratories and the new HQ for North Yorkshire Police's Harrogate Police Station.

BBC TV Horizon experiments: sensory deprivation bunker

Just in case you were wondering where those bizarre psychological experiments were carried out on BBC TV's Horizon documentary "Total Isolation" in January 2008, here's the answer.

It was all filmed back in Summer 2007 deep underground within the old decommissioned RAF Bentley Priory bunker to the east of the main mansion, at Stanmore Common, Middlesex near London.

New Typhoon Eurofighter weapons arming compound

PermalinkIn late 2007, many excited readers and forum message board members contacted me convinced that they'd discovered a previously uncharted Cold War nuclear bunker also in Lincolnshire (previous section above). After some routine research I came up with even more interesting findings.

Discussions had centred on a very high security fenced-off area on the south west side of RAF Coningsby – new home to the Typhoon Eurofighter jets. I noticed that it isn't marked on ANY Ordnance Survey map scales, even the most detailed 1:10000 data.

Then I compared Getmapping's imagery from 1999 and 2004 (below). Bingo. The earlier imagery just showed an empty farmer's field. The newer imagery (now also seen on Google Earth) confirmed that the facility is a "new build". It is a special compound that has been built OUTSIDE the previous established perimeter line (the fence now having been extended and diverted).

Project PRIDE and DIS – Defence Intelligence Staff

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Defence Geospatial Intelligence Fusion Centre (DGIFC)

Sometimes, "Secret Bases" are right under your nose in the most obvious locations – like on industrial estates in the middle of cities. Consider Elmwood Avenue in Feltham, South West London. Right in the middle of all those industrial units, you'll find the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency (DGIA) which "does exactly what it says on the tin".

At DGIA Feltham, experts in both traditional and digital cartography and aerial photo interpretation provide essential backup to all military services but especially the RAF. The HQ of the Agency (plus the Intelligence Collection Group, ICG) is at that industrial estate in Feltham but there are important outposts at RAF Brampton in Cambridgeshire and at Denison Barracks at Hermitage near Newbury, Berkshire (often spelt Dennison). Brampton houses the RAF's Joint Air Reconnaissance Centre (JARIC – also known as the National Imagery Exploitation Centre), while Hermitage is home to Headquarters Joint Aeronautical and Geospatial Organisation (JAGO) and 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographic).

In April 2009, it was announced that the various Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) facilities at Brampton, Feltham and Hermitage were to be consolidated onto a new purpose built site within RAF Wyton near Brampton, as part of the PRIDE Wyton project (Programme to Rationalise and Integrate the DIS Estate). A September 2008 planning application reveals the central accommodation for the Defence Intelligence Staff is to be the futuristic looking Building 0101. The new facility will ultimately be known as the Defence Geospatial Intelligence Fusion Centre (DGIFC).

Sometimes, "Secret Bases" have much more innocent uses than their names suggest. For example, look at Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire – a town normally associated with the manufacture of pork pies.

To the north west of the town, you'll find the Defence Animal Centre (DAC), split over two main sites, north and south of Welby Lane. The southern site was actually the old Royal Army Veterinary Corps HQ and the Army's last Remount Depot. A little further east, at the end of Elmhurst Avenue, you can see the associated military personnel camp. All the Melton Mowbray sites turn out to be associated with the training of dogs (and horses too) for MoD and other military and government use. Of course, primarily, the dogs are trained in the search and identification of ammunition, explosives and drugs.

Several enthusiastic readers of my website contacted me in 2005 to ask me what I thought of some curious buildings in Kidbrooke, South East London. They raised suspicions because not all maps showed them and when they did, they were never labelled. Furthermore, they follow that classic geometric layout, typical of Government and MoD buildings. They are tucked away beyond the end of a new housing estate on Nelson Mandela Road.

It turns out that a little local knowledge is required. The buildings turn out to be a special storage depot for the National Maritime Museum (NMM) at Greenwich but during World War Two, it was an RAF equipment store. The Kidbrooke depot was due to be disposed of by the NMM during 2006.

Royal Navy shore establishments around Portsdown

PermalinkTwo of the UK's most secretive Government research laboratories are to be found at Fort Halstead in Kent and at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

These two bases are part of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) network. Certain other research facilities, which have been transferred to the commercial sector, have been collected together under the umbrella organisation QinetiQ – pronounced "kinetic". As mentioned earlier, DSTL and QinetiQ were formed in July 2001 out of the old Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), which controlled all of the UK's MoD test ranges and research establishments.

In November 2003, DSTL announced a rationalisation programme whereby its staff would be focussed down to three core "centres of excellence". Namely, Porton Down (the DSTL HQ), Fort Halstead and the comparatively little-known Portsdown West. Meanwhile, QinetiQ would carry on the private sector work at the other former DSTL locations. The slimming down programme is due to be eventually completed by 2008.

The Portsdown West location is in a fascinating area on the chalk hills dotted with Victorian defence forts, overlooking the Naval Base at Portsmouth. One of those fortifications, Fort Southwick, was the former Admiralty Research Establishment.

A tunnel network 100 feet underneath it was used as the D-Day communications nerve centre in WWII. More recently it was a Royal Navy communications base run by the DCSA. Now it is under private ownership after being sold off by the MoD.

Another old Royal Navy establishment, HMS Dryad, can be seen in the village of Southwick further north. This is now the new home of the Defence Police College, a training base for the "Redcaps" – the Royal Military Police (RMP). They moved here in September 2005 from Roussillon Barracks in Chichester, West Sussex – their HQ since 1964.

Further east along the Portsmouth Downs, you can find the old Portsdown Main site, another former Royal Navy communications base, once packed with SIGINT buildings but now abandoned.

At the eastern-most end of the old Portsdown Main site, QinetiQ has another facility on Portsdown Technology Park (below). Here, in the LBTS (Land-Based Test Site), QinetiQ provides key testing, evaluation and training for Royal Navy equipment and staff working on Type 23 Frigate and Type 42 Destroyer projects, before going to sea on expensive trials.

Also accessible through the QinetiQ site is the Royal Navy's Maritime Warfare Centre (MWC). According to the Royal Navy's official website, it "provides a 'one-stop' shop for the evolution and dissemination of Maritime Doctrine and Concepts in a Joint Environment through Education, Tactical Development, Operational Analysis, Concept and Doctrine Development and Wargaming". Well, that's cleared that up then.

If you pan west on the high resolution Google Maps image (further below) of Portsdown Technology Park, you come across a curious and intriguing very secure compound on Portsdown Hill Road immediately adjacent to Fort Southwick. It is within Google Earth's high quality aerial photography coverage (also further below).

The compound turns out to be the pumping valve station for the former Royal Navy Underground Fuel Reserve dating from World War Two, which has now been drained and decommissioned. The compound is still maintained for regular safety checks, hence the substantial security fencing.

The Google Maps and Google Earth imagery reveals two large access portals to the south (alongside the M27 motorway) and another smaller one to the north. These portals allowed personnel to reach the huge underground fuel reservoir chambers through long tunnels carved out of the Portsdown chalk hillside.

The tunnels also carried the underground fuel pipelines up from the Admiralty Oil Fuel Depot over at Forton, Gosport, taking a circuitous route via the neighbouring Royal Naval Armaments Depots and DARA Fleetlands.

For the full detailed analysis of all the fascinating locations in the Portsdown area, visit:-

• www.portsdown-tunnels.org.uk

Special Communications Units (SCU) – Leydene, Garat's Hay and Beaumanor

PermalinkPicture this. The quintessential English countryside. The country estate with a stately home set in acres of parkland. The surrounding affluent stockbroker belt. The gentle walking route, called the South Downs Way, which runs through the whole area. An idyll. Surely no signs of a Secret Base here. Wrong. Take a fresh look with Windows Live Local's Bird's Eye. Out from the lush verdant pastures emerges a once top secret Royal Navy shore establishment involved in covert signals interception. Stark 1940s buildings, laid out in a curious crescent shape, incongruently nestle next to ancient architectural splendour.

It ran from 1941 and throughout the Cold War until its final decommission in 2001. It was mentioned on the most recent "Sensitive Sites Register", finally scrapped only in 2006 due to the defeat of Government secrecy by Internet-based technology.

So where is it? Where did its activities get transferred to? Who are those strange new incumbents at the abandoned Royal Navy inland base?

Travel further north from the Portsdown area and consider the village of East Meon near Petersfield. Have a look at Leydene Park just a few miles to the south and you'll see a country house and its grounds, with the South Downs Way passing through the middle.

Take a look at the Bird's Eye aerial photo from Windows Live Local below and you'll see the former HMS Mercury, also known as the Special Communications Unit – SCU Leydene.

The distinctive buildings laid out in a crescent, now empty, can still be seen but other parts of the establishment have now been taken over by the Earthworks Trust, a charity promoting "green" living with its new Sustainability Centre.

Upon closure in 2001, the activities at SCU Leydene were transferred to the Portsdown area at HMS Collingwood in Fareham – the largest naval training base in Europe.

SCU Beaumanor and Garat's Hay

Another former SCU site can be found out of the area completely, in the village of Woodhouse near Loughborough in Leicestershire. This signals intercept facility made use of not only the local stately home but also the village vicarage. Once again, there are surprise new residents in the abandoned Secret Base.

Take a look at Beaumanor Hall (also further below) and the neighbouring old vicarage known as Garat's Hay. Both housed covert signals operatives throughout the 1940s and into the Cold War. In fact, GCHQ were still using it until the early 1970s, when it was finally abandoned.

On Getmapping's aerial shot from 1999, you can make out the wireless operations huts adjacent to the hall and around the perimeter of the grounds. You can't fail to notice the former site of a huge antenna in the middle of the estate, resembling the shape of the famous Elephant Cage at DISC Chicksands. However, the aerial mast and its control building at the centre had already been removed by the time Getmapping's pilots passed overhead. Just south of the circular ground site for the radio mast, you can see the old barracks.

The MoD have now cleared the barracks and built the brand new Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College (DSFC), also below, which opened in September 2005. It provides education for prospective engineering officers in all the armed services plus scientists in the MoD and it emphasises leadership and team playing qualities. It was relocated from its former home at Welbeck Abbey near Worksop in Nottinghamshire.

Note that the more recent aerial photo of the new Welbeck College reveals that the old circular antenna site has been finally landscaped away completely and covered with the new sports grounds. Don't you think that the central college building hints at the secret history by resembling the GCHQ Doughnut at Cheltenham?

For the definitive account of Beaumanor and Garat's Hay, plus information on the Welbeck College, visit these links:-

• www.garatshay.org.uk
• www.dsfc.ac.uk

UKCMRI – Biohazard Laboratory at St. Pancras Eurostar Terminal

PermalinkA pressure group Stop Camden Danger Lab has been set-up to oppose the plans for the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) (known as the Francis Crick Institute from July 2011). It is working from a "campaign office" at the Hare Krishna Matchless Gifts Centre in Caledonian Road, near King's Cross station and is led by a woman living on one of the estates which will be overlooked by the laboratory. The major planning application can be found on Camden Council's website. Note how the project has evolved since its original submission in June 2009, by studying the latest revision lodged in January 2010. Incidentally, the original idea was for NIMR to move to another highly inappropriate location at the old derelict Temperance Hospital on Hampstead Road, right next to Euston Station. This was even criticised by MI5 and was eventually discounted on grounds of its inadequate size anyway.

So NIMR chose the latest site at Brill Place behind the British Library on Euston Road and alongside St. Pancras International on Midland Road. It has also been referred to as the British Library International Science Site (BLISS) – a name which riled the Animal Rights movement and has been quietly dropped. It has been the site of numerous temporary buildings for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) construction project workers employed at St. Pancras. Given that the Eurostar Terminal, together with King's Cross and Euston stations are top terrorism targets, it does seem the height of folly to locate a laboratory holding potentially deadly samples next to a major international transport hub and densely populated housing – a lab which also happens to perform tests on animals with all its implications for security.

A major headache for MI5, certainly. A recipe for disaster? Study this official report  [Mirror, PDF, 530KB] for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on incidents at similar biohazard labs in America and then read on to the next section.

Aug/Sep 2007 "Foot and Mouth Disease Laboratory Incident"

In August 2007, the spectre of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in farm animals reared its ugly head again after the devastating effects of the infamous 2001 outbreak. But this time it was suspected that a Government Research Laboratory developing vaccines for the disease had accidentally released a strain of the virus into the surrounding countryside.

The initial area of concern was some fields used by grazing cattle around Westwood Place in Westwood Lane, Wanborough, Normandy near Guildford, Surrey. Amazingly, the nearby country house Wanborough Manor was actually used during WWII as a top secret training establishment for agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) "F" Branch, destined to work on covert assignments in German occupied France. Strange but true.

The Institute for Animal Health's (IAH) Pirbright Laboratory, deep within Ministry of Defence country near to the traditional military town of Aldershot in Surrey, was put under scrutiny after FMD was found in animals in the Wanborough fields. The Pirbright laboratory facilities are shared by the commercial veterinary drugs manufacturer Merial Animal Health.

Just days after the initial incident, the Government's emergency protection zone was extended south west to another focus – a major beef cattle business centred around Woolford's Farm in Elstead near Godalming, Surrey, which used those fields at Westwood Place near Wanborough Manor for its grazing herd.

Then Hunts Hill Farm on Normandy Common – back near Wanborough – had all its animals slaughtered, only to later discover that FMD tests came back negative. A further suspect location at Manor Farm in Wotton near Dorking turned out to be a false alarm. Next, Government scientists were sent into Honeychild Manor Farm at St. Mary in the Marsh near New Romney, Kent – completely outside the original protection zones. Thankfully, the FMD tests there returned negative too.

The IAH has other research laboratories at Compton near Newbury in Berkshire and at the Neuropathogenesis Unit within the Ogston Building in the south west corner of the King's Buildings Campus of Scotland's Edinburgh University in the West Mains area of the city.

Conditions at the Pirbright laboratories were severely criticised in a damning report [PDF, 200KB] for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in July 2002, insisting that an immediate 5 year programme of remedial action was put in place to bring the infrastructure up to full appropriate specification. Whether all the recommendations in that report were ever acted upon remains to be seen.

In September 2007, the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) official findings [PDF, 1.6MB] revealed that a faulty waste pipe between the Merial and Government labs at Pirbright had leaked the virus into the countryside through drains which had overflowed due to local flooding.

As the farming industry was breathing a sigh of relief as DEFRA gave the apparent all-clear, another outbreak happened in mid-September just days after the report was published. This time, Milton Park Farm at Stroude near Egham was cordoned-off and the owners of the cattle grazing there also had their own Hardwick Court Farm at Lyne near Chertsey inspected by DEFRA officials. Milton Park's neighbour Stroude Farm had its livestock culled as a precautionary measure and they were later confirmed as infected. Later, the same thing happened at Klondyke Piggeries at Virginia Water.

Then emergency FMD tests were carried out at Woodhouse Farm in the village of Catherine-de-Barnes near Solihull, just south of Birmingham International Airport. Thankfully the results were negative.

The story took a further disturbing twist and FMD spread to the Berkshire / Surrey border, threatening the Queen's own Royal Estate at Windsor. FMD was confirmed at Beaumont College Farm on Priest Hill in Old Windsor, right next to the historic sites of the Magna Carta monument and John F. Kennedy memorial at Runnymede.

A suspected case at Slade Farm in Rogate near Petersfield, Hampshire turned out to be a false alarm but then another case was detected back in Egham at Sandylands Home Farm in Englefield Green. Meanwhile, another suspect case was investigated just across the border in Wiltshire with a 3km temporary protection zone being set up around Little Buckholt Farm at The Warren, West Tytherley near Salisbury. Another zone soon had to be established around Ledger Farm in Fifield near Maidenhead in Berkshire, over on the west side of the Queen's estate. Both temporary zones subsequently resulted in negative tests.

The disease later spread to another Runnymede location at Ankerwycke Farm in Wraysbury near Staines, Middlesex. It was thought that four neighbouring farms would also have their cattle culled as a precaution. Nearby, the historic Ankerwycke Yew Tree – under which the Magna Carta was signed by King John and later, where King Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn – can be found next to the ruins of an old priory.

As if the FMD caused by the Government lab leak wasn't bad enough, the farming industry was hit by another body blow as the first ever UK case of the midge-borne Bluetongue Virus (BTV) was detected in a Highland cow on a children's animal petting centre at Baylham House Rare Breeds Farm near Needham Market, north of Ipswich, Suffolk. It is the historic site of the Combretovium Roman fort and settlement. A second cow on site subsequently tested positive too. Then a third Bluetongue case was discovered at Beehive Farm in Lound near Hopton-on-Sea, north of Lowestoft, Suffolk. Finally, after two more cases of Bluetongue – at Mace Green Farm in Copdock near Washbrook and at White House Farm in Burstall – DEFRA declared the situation as an official BTV "outbreak".

None of the media organisations seemed to pick up on the fact that all of the September 2007 FMD outbreak sites around Egham just happen to be also very close to two huge internationally famous research facilities.

One is Rusham Park – the European research and development HQ of health and beauty products manufacturer Proctor and Gamble. More significantly, the other is the University of London's Royal Holloway College, whose Biomedical Sciences department – according to its own website – has official links with the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright and is sponsored by the BBSRC.

Porton Down, CDE Nancekuke and CDE Sutton Oak

Permalink Many test veterans from the 1950s, seeking compensation from the Government for their illnesses, believe they were stationed at the Germ Warfare research facility at Porton Down. In fact they were based at the neighbouring Defence Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Centre (DNBCC) at Winterbourne Gunner. On its official website, the Government announced that, "unfortunately, records at Winterbourne Gunner were routinely destroyed some years ago".

It was known formerly as the Joint School of Chemical Warfare and is marked on maps as simply "barracks". It has now been renamed again to the Defence Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Centre (DCBRNC). The test ranges on the land to the east of these sites are marked on all maps as Danger Zones. Until September 2009, the Winterbourne Gunner site also housed the Police National CBRN Centre (PN-CBRN-C) for training officers in so-called "dirty bomb" terrorist incidents. It was then relocated to the famous National Police Training College at Ryton-on-Dunsmore near Coventy Airport. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police's own CBRN emergency response team is based in the old police station on Albany Street, close to the SAS in Regent's Park Barracks.

Before reaching the main DSTL Porton Down site (beyond an armed guard sentry point), just on the left of the approach road you'll find the CAMR site - the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research. This site is the civilian side of Porton's activities. It is now part of the Health Protection Agency (HPA), formed out of the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) and the Microbiological Research Authority (MRA).

Since 2000, various MoD buildings on the DSTL site have been developed into the Porton Down Science Park, hosting numerous biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies tapping into the lucrative intellectual property patent market.

One such company has even obtained a special government licence to grow cannabis plants, to research medicinal benefits from the active (non-smoked!) ingredients. Needless to say, they insist that their computer controlled cultivation glasshouses are at another secure "top secret location somewhere in the south of England". Therefore, it's doubtful whether there will be a rush by entrepreneurs to open tuck shops next door to Porton Down, selling Mars Bars to satisfy those "munchies" moments!

To the east of DSTL Porton Down's main site, right in the middle of the Danger Area on Idmiston Down, you can spot on Ordnance Survey maps a double ring-fenced rectangular area. This is the high security compound where unexploded chemical weapons shells are stored until they are incinerated. International weapons inspectors come here to audit their disposal. This compound is the only UK site licensed to deal with legacy chemical weapons when they are recovered.

In the centre of the compound, there are storage bays for the thousands of shells containing phosgene, stannic chloride, mustard gas and bromobenzyl cyanide, among other deadly concoctions. At the north corner you will find the inspection laboratory and PINS bunker – Portable Isotopic Neutron Spectroscopy. The incinerator plant is situated 1000 metres to the north west. Meanwhile, 500 metres immediately to the south, you can find the Home Made Explosives (HME) research and test facility, opened in 2012.

Porton Down was at the centre of international news headlines in March 2018 when Russian ex-spy and former MI6 agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were apparently poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury town centre. Specialists from Porton were called in to analyse the substance.

Porton Down: Project Helios

In 2016 a planning application was submitted to Wiltshire Council for a major redevelopment of Porton Down called Project Helios. It includes numerous new buildings to allow for future work and the incorporation of functions transferring from the closed Fort Halstead explosives laboratory near Sevenoaks in Kent.

Project Helios comprises an Energetics Analysis Centre (EAC), a New Chemicals Centre (NCC), a Core Enclosure (CE), and a Single Small Scale Facility (SSSF) – all at the centre of the main Porton Down site among existing buildings. Those new central facilities include electronics laboratories and double-height vehicle workshops and are designated Building 700 (NCC), Building 800 (CE), Building 750 (SSSF) and Building 850 (the link between 700 and 800). The Energetics Analysis Centre is to be known as Building 600. Additionally an explosives magazine enclave – Large Energetics Facility (LEF) – has been constructed to provide for staff moving from Fort Halstead's explosives laboratory.

However, most interesting of all is a Remote Enclosure (RE) storage warehouse and forensic inspection facility known as Building F500, constructed at the far north of the Porton Down site alongside the London to Salisbury train line. It has been built on the site of MoD-owned Allington Farm which once bred animals to be tested on.

It is most likely that the Remote Enclosure facility – equipped with a Perimeter Intrusion Detection System (PIDS) – will be used to store and inspect exhibits in terrorism investigations conducted by MI5. The Allington Farm site also has a secure area for the storage of shipping containers, seen on a Google Street View from the other side of the train line.

An earlier planning application in 2009 provided a new radio frequency (RF) turntable facility – 12m in diameter – for the testing of electronic military equipment housed in vehicles. It was built on the site of disused derelict agricultural sheds.

The planning application documents for Building F500 show that the Allington Farm site has a sign on the security gate that reads "CBD Farm" – Chemical Biological Defence rather than Cannabidiol.

• www.gov.uk/guidance/porton-down-volunteers-requesting-information

CDE Nancekuke at RAF Portreath and
CDE Sutton Oak, St. Helens

In 1950, at the height of the Cold War, the MoD started a truly top secret chemical warfare production plant on the site of the WWII RAF airbase at Portreath in Cornwall. The Chemical Defence Establishment – CDE Nancekuke - was built on top of RAF Portreath's runways (indicated further below). Research laboratories were constructed on the runways at the Central Site. Sarin nerve gas was produced in the North Site factory until 1956, when Britain's chemical weapons programme ceased. Production then switched to riot control agents such as CS gas. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, other work was concentrated on research into nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) counter-measures, in collaboration with the main Porton Down and Winterbourne Gunner sites in Wiltshire.

Around the time the original Porton Down facility was built (during World War One), another Chemical Defence Establishment was set-up at CDE Sutton Oak between Liverpool and Manchester, close to the site of what is now Reginald Road Industrial Estate, near St. Helens. The Sutton Oak facility produced nerve agents and also "sniffer" kits to detect mustard gas, etc. It is thought that equipment was transferred to Nancekuke after the St. Helens factory closed in 1953. The precise location of the Sutton Oak "Poison Gas Works", as local residents called it, is the land south of Reginald Road, west of Abbotsfield Road and east of Hawthorne Road, on the east side of the disused rail track that once led into Clock Face Sidings. Historical maps between 1890 and 1910 show previous uses of Sutton Oak's Chemical Defence Establishment buildings were firstly Bold Manure Works and then Turner's Glass Works. The European Furniture Group (EFG) distribution unit, the Springfield modular portable building manufacturers and Rutland House Referrals veterinary surgery on Abbotsfield Road now sit right on top of the old CDE Sutton Oak site.

CDE Nancekuke was officially closed in 1980 and the site was handed back to the RAF. They filled it with radar equipment to use it as an airspace defence Control and Reporting Post (CRP) – parented by RAF St. Mawgan, discussed earlier. The base is obviously dotted with numerous fenced-off areas containing radar buildings and aerial masts. But there's another exciting secret lurking hidden in some woodland. Consider the main security gate on RAF Portreath's south side. It is reached by Tolticken Hill which rises up through a narrow gorge from the main Penberthy Road.

Through the densely packed trees to the east, across the gorge you'll discover a special ring-fenced area. Use the special implementation of Google Maps further below and you'll see the underground CRP command bunker which was built into the hillside next to Nancekuke Farm in 1986. Take a closer look using the 1:10000 scale map from MAGIC. The CRP bunker at Portreath has been used to pass data through RAF Neatishead in Norfolk (mentioned earlier) on to the NATO and MoD Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) command and control bunker at Northwood in North West London.

The truth about RAF Portreath's history as CDE Nancekuke only finally emerged in the 1990s. Full details of the continuing decommissioning programme (Nancekuke Remediation Project – NRP), being carried out by experts at DSTL Porton Down, can be found on the official MoD website.

• www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/WhatWeDo/DefenceEstateandEnvironment/Nancekuke/

The 1994 "Boscombe Down Incident"

Permalink Almost within walking distance of both Porton Down and Winterbourne Gunner, you'll find the UK's miniaturised answer to America's Edwards Air Force Base and Area 51 at Boscombe Down airbase. It is where all the RAF's new toys are put through their paces and where US "black projects" are also tested and evaluated. Although modest by US standards, it's no accident that it boasts one of the longest military runways in the UK. Boscombe Down is larger than the neighbouring town of Amesbury and is also close to the Army's massive training ranges on Salisbury Plain.

Local UFO clusters were probably explained by regular visits by the top secret F-117 stealth aircraft during its development phase, rather than the excessive consumption of particularly potent Wiltshire ale at Midsummer Solstice parties being held at prehistoric Stonehenge, just a few miles to the north west.

On September 26th 1994, the Boscombe Down airbase hit the headlines when a serious incident occurred on the main runway. So serious was this incident, that the UK's Special Forces – the SAS – were called in to deal with emergency security measures. Additionally, the CIA got involved in the "damage limitation" operation and aviation enthusiasts who flocked to the scene reported that Area 51 style "Janet" flights were seen arriving. These unmarked US Government-run Boeing 737s are used to ferry the workers into the US top secret "black project" base at Groom Lake.

It has been rumoured ever since that a secret US "next generation" stealth fighter project crashed on take-off at Boscombe Down. Sadly, both US aircrew were reported to have been killed, presumably impaled by the nose gear coming through the cockpit. The emergency team quickly threw covers over the mysterious aircraft and arrangements were made to ship the evidence out of the country on a giant US military transporter plane.

Did the incident involve nuclear weapons and/or cargo? Were "nasties" being carried into or out of the neighbouring biological and chemical warfare research laboratory at Porton Down? Was the aircraft a top secret US "black project"? Was it the much talked about "Aurora"?

For a full account of the incident, visit:-

• www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects/boscombe.htm

The UK's own next generation stealth project is known as "HALO" – "High Altitude / Agility, Low Observability". This top secret project name was accidentally revealed in Government accounts documents many years ago and is now public domain. The main research and development base for the HALO project is widely acknowledged to be that ubiquitous organisation BAE Systems at their military aircraft site at Warton near Preston in Lancashire, on the River Ribble estuary. This certainly explains various reports of UFOs flying over Blackpool Pleasure Beach, further around the coast.

Another contender for longest UK military runway is RAF Machrihanish at Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, which was also rumoured to be used for the testing of the top secret F-117 stealth fighter. Machrihanish's beachside main runway – over 3km long – is unusual in that it runs west-east and allows aircraft to approach from over the Atlantic Ocean without first going over many residential areas.

Take a look at the north side of the runway and you'll spot the former nuclear bomb storage bunkers and on the south side you'll see the famous ultra-secretive Gaydon Hangar, well away from prying eyes. Which stealth Black Project is hidden behind those doors – always kept firmly shut?

The Kintyre peninsula was made famous by former resident Paul McCartney's song lamenting the mist rolling in off the sea.

A more sinister form of fame was created on 2nd June 1994 when an RAF Chinook helicopter – flight ZD576 – carrying the UK's and Northern Ireland's upper echelons of military and secret service staff, crashed in poor weather near Machrihanish airfield whilst on its way from Belfast to a meeting on anti-terrorism at Fort George near Inverness.

An initial RAF Board of Inquiry was quick to conveniently conclude that "pilot error" was the cause. However, rumours have persisted ever since that the helicopter was caught in the jet wake of a hypersonic US "black project" experimental aircraft, using the airfield at Machrihanish.

An alternative (but less sexy) explanation could be a failure of the engine management software, known as "FADEC" (Full Authority Digital Engine Control), which the MoD would have obviously wanted to keep quiet about. The MoD, RAF and most significantly, the evaluation engineers at DERA Boscombe Down, were well aware of numerous incidents involving the FADEC system on Chinooks, whereby the engines would suddenly either surge to full throttle or shut down to idle speed. A Memorial Cairn to the victims was erected at the crash site on Beinn na Lice, near the Mull of Kintyre lighthouse. An official campaign group sought supporters to petition to help clear the pilots' names. They finally achieved this in July 2011.

Fort Halstead

PermalinkWhilst the Chemical and Biological Warfare research base at Porton Down, near Boscombe Down airbase (discussed earlier), is well known throughout the world, the activities of Fort Halstead (below) are cloaked in the highest levels of secrecy, but are thought to include the latest research into laser and stealth technology. What is certain is that Fort Halstead is staffed by graduates in every conceivable scientific discipline, many at "PhD" level. In the past, part of the site has been involved in the evaluation of materials used for explosives, under the title of the Armaments Research Establishment.

Significantly, in 1947, Britain's first nuclear weapons project – a plutonium bomb – was started at Fort Halstead in a secret area within the base, hidden away from other research activities. It was known as "HER" – High Explosives Research. This top secret "base within a base" was masterminded by Sir William (and later Lord) Penney, a scientist who had formerly worked at the US Los Alamos site.

The Fort Halstead base is located on the site of an ancient Napoleonic fortification at the tiny village of Halstead near Sevenoaks, Kent and is hidden away in a wood, tucked into the South East corner of the M25 orbital motorway encircling London. However, when viewed at 1:25000 scale, Fort Halstead suddenly emerges from all those leafy branches and gets that classic label "Works". Significantly, in early 2005, Ordnance Survey finally cleared away all that foliage and revealed details of Fort Halstead's buildings at 1:50000 scale for the first time.

View Fort Halstead once again, at street map level and a jolly handy helicopter landing pad is revealed on the approach road. Very interestingly, that street level map includes a label "Restricted Area" – could this refer to the former plutonium bomb development area? Another helipad can be spotted from the air within the perimeter fence, to the west of Armstrong Close.

In June 2007, in a major update to Google Earth's UK imagery, Fort Halstead finally became available at high resolution. Better still, take a look at my exclusive Pilot's Eye Views further below taken by my regular contributor in September 2007. They were formally cleared for publication by the Ministry of Defence / MI5.

The original fort location in the centre of the site has since been converted into underground bunker facilities. Over at the rear perimeter security gate on Star Hill Road, to the south west of the site, you can see numerous huge blast protector revetments used for explosives storage areas. More recently, the UK Government has used part of the Fort Halstead site as its Forensic Explosives Laboratory. It is considered to be one of the best in the world, probably only bettered by the FBI's own facilities. As the name suggests, this is where teams of scientists literally piece together the fragments left over from terrorist atrocities. It is reasonable to assume that, for example, the remains strewn over the vast forests near Lockerbie in 1988 were sent to Fort Halstead for analysis to provide evidence for the subsequent trial of the suspects.

Indeed, on 7th July 2005, when (allegedly) al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the London transport infrastructure, the news media reported that analytical experts from Fort Halstead had been rushed to the various scenes of devastation. It is thought that the Number 30 London bus that was bombed in Tavistock Square was transported down to Fort Halstead for forensic scrutiny.

GCHQ, FORDE, OFCOM, PSDB, HOSDB and CAST

PermalinkClose to Fort Halstead, described above, you will find another tiny Kent village hiding a secret. Have a close look at the OS maps around Ivy Farm in Knockholt. The maps show an aerial symbol at this location. "OK", you think, "it's obviously a TV/radio mast". Well yes, it's a telecom tower with mobile phone masts and microwave dishes.

Consider the farm itself. Maybe if you're told that Ivy Farm once housed operatives seconded from GCHQ in the WWII/Bletchley Park years, performing signals interception and analysis work across London, you'll see the full picture. In the late 1940s, it was designated the Foreign Office Research and Development Establishment (FORDE).

Over on the other side of London, just north east of Baldock in Hertfordshire you can spot a substantial "wireless station" in some fields. This is run by the Government's Office for Communications and turns out to be OFCOM's Baldock Radio Monitoring Station. It is tasked with ensuring critical transmissions are not threatened by interference from illegal broadcasts. It seems safe to assume that it liaises with GCHQ and MI5.

Also in Hertfordshire, north east of St. Albans and close to Hatfield Aerodrome, you can find another old wartime outpost of GCHQ. On Woodcock Hill near the village of Sandridge, you'll find a "wireless station" (pictured below) that more recently has provided a home to "boffins" working for the Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB).

From April 2005, it was known as the Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB). More recent still, it has been known as the Centre for Applied Science and Technology (CAST [PDF, 1.4MB]). The research work has included the development of hi-tech gadgetry for the police, biometric techniques such as iris recognition and passport "chips" for airline passengers.

Another associated site can be found at Langhurst north of Horsham in West Sussex, near Gatwick Airport. The scientists also provide additional technical backup to MI5 in their counter-terrorism role, developing portable equipment to detect chemical, biological and nuclear material on public transport infrastructure. An official Government website details their activities and identifies their customers.

In early 2017, persistent rumours were finally confirmed that the Woodcock Hill, Sandridge site would close, with staff being transferred to other government laboratories – notably DSTL HQ at Porton Down near Salisbury, Wiltshire, detailed earlier on this page.

Clearings in woods – Ammunition Compounds

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Sneaky planning application stunt fails to fool locals

Very close to Fort Halstead discussed earlier, you may be able to spot something else of interest hidden in the middle of Jenkin's Neck Wood at the amusingly named village of Badgers Mount, not too far away from another village which causes sniggering, Pratt's Bottom.

By switching between my various Map Link Options, try studying Getmapping's aerial photo (below) in conjunction with the OS maps of the area. The 1:50000 and 1:25000 OS maps just don't label the site at all, but at least it does show up. Try the Government's own MAGIC interactive mapping service and zoom into the 1:10000 scale. Bingo. Up pops a rather coy label – "Depot". Take a Bird's Eye look from the west (also below), using Windows Live Local.

You can use all the classic signs to piece together the clues: the clearing in the middle of a wood; the buildings laid out in a regular pattern; the adjacent main train line; the train tunnel apparently running directly underneath the site. Is it an old DERA test facility once affiliated somehow to Fort Halstead?

It actually just turns out to be part of the DSDA network and is an Ammunition Compound (AC) for the DSDA's Defence Munitions (DM) sites dotted around the country. The Badgers Mount depot is known more properly as AC Chelsfield, named after the town to the north west. The Defence Munitions sites are headquartered at the massive DM Kineton in Warwickshire, alongside the M40 motorway. It's impossible to miss the substantial train line network serving the Kineton site, the central part of which is shown further below in a pilot's eye view from my regular contributor.

If you live in the South East of England, you might even have already been past the Badgers Mount depot without knowing it. The famous Polhill Garden Centre, with its distinctive windmill, is right next door. A quick look at the Royal Mail address database reveals an interesting entry in the Badgers Mount area, simply listed as: "ASD", Shacklands Road, TN14 7BD. It would seem that the coy acronym "ASD" stands for Ammunition Storage Depot.

In January 2011, local residents were horrified to learn that FM Conway Limited of Dartford had bought AC Chelsfield after Defence Estates had put the site on the market for disposal in 2010. FM Conway has countless very lucrative contracts with councils all over London for recycling of asphalt and aggregate and for road maintenance such as gully cleansing. They have a vast new plant at Erith.

FM Conway are trying an old favourite planning trick – attempting to get a Certificate of Lawful Use for pre-existing planning permission for B8 classification, namely storage and distribution. The stunt involves submitting an application in the week between Christmas and New Year, when everyone's distracted. Then once they get the certificate, they expect Sevenoaks Council to merely rubber stamp a follow-up full planning application.

But why perform this sneaky sleight of hand? Quite simply, they know full well that pre-existing planning permission did not exist for anything – the MoD had Crown Immunity from planning laws up until June 2006. The site has been in use since WWII to store munitions securely and remotely from the military bases which needed them – and hidden away in bunkers underground. Most recently, Fort Halstead has used it merely for long term secure storage of depleted munitions. But it has been disused since 2007 and the site abandoned in March 2010. Any movement of these materials was done extremely discreetly using small vehicles not massive aggregate lorries thundering down the roads. By all accounts, the MoD have been quite good neighbours in their 70 years at Shacklands Road. Many residents have spotted this essential difference too, including a Kent County Councillor in Maidstone who lives close to Badgers Mount – but I thought, "will Sevenoaks Council have the guts to do the right thing"?

• Kent County Council Minerals Sites Consultation Options – FM Conway's proposal for AC Chelsfield
• AC Chelsfield Planning Applications, Appeals, Public Inquiry
• AC Chelsfield Freedom of Information (FOI) request by this website

Lockerbie Pan Am 103 scrap site turned into holiday homes

PermalinkAn almost identical ammunition compound to the previous Chelsfield example, south west of Farnborough Airfield in Hampshire, is also visible on stunning new high quality imagery used on both Google Earth and Google Maps.

Take a look at another mysterious clearing in a wood at Puckridge Hill, just across Fleet Road and opposite the main gate of the Army's Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) Long Valley driver training unit at Eelmoor Hill. Note that the high security depot is within easy reach of numerous military barracks, firing ranges and training areas around Aldershot – the home town of the British Army. Puckridge Hill was also the site of a WWII Prisoner of War (PoW) camp. The ammunition compound at Puckridge Hill is now used by Aldershot's Buller Barracks as a military working dog unit.

Take a further look just a little to the north east of AC Puckridge Hill described above, on Farnborough Airfield's south side, in yet another clearing in the woods at the airfield's Puckridge Gate. You'll find the HQ of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). They have been tasked with piecing together the debris left over from plane crashes, reconstructing and labelling the layout of the parts on the floors of hangars at the airfield.

This was also the final resting place for the main fuselage of the Pan Am Flight 103 Boeing 747 which crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, following a terrorist attack. In the days immediately following the incident, the fragments had been hurriedly assembled at the huge military storage depot at DSDA Longtown near Carlisle, just over the border into England.

In contrast, the twisted remains of the cockpit section of the crashed Pan Am flight 103 have been stored at a special compound at a scrapyard in Tattershall, Lincolnshire ever since. It is adjacent to the airbase at RAF Coningsby and is pictured below, from a Daily Mail story in October 2007. An even better aerial view of the wreckage storage site is in another Daily Mail story on the 20th anniversary in December 2008. The scrapyard owner, Roger Windley – who has run his motor salvage business for over 40 years – has reportedly been paid £800 every month for nearly twenty years to store the remains in the open air.

However, in August 2007 – according to a report in the Yorkshire Post – a local leisure company called Allerway bought the Roger Windley business for £25 million, with a view to expanding their Tattershall Lakes Country Park caravan and log cabin empire.

Think back to those ammunition compounds at Badgers Mount and Puckridge Hill and the Kineton munitions centre. Note the distinctive features and layouts. Then take a look at the Pilot's Eye view of an almost identical site at the village of Kibworth Beauchamp near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, pictured further below. There's even what looks like a military watch tower for security. Intriguing, to say the least.

But click on that cropped close-up shot to see the full hi-res wide angle view. A rather different story emerges. The location is Kibworth Shooting Ground. There's certainly plenty of ammunition in evidence – the building in the centre is the premier gun shop in the Midlands.

It is actually the home of clay pigeon sporting events and that tall tower is one of the venue's key challenges, firing the clays out. The mounds, which so uncannily resemble the blast protection revetments at a munitions depot, were actually put in place when the new Great Glen A6 bypass up to Oadby, Wigston and Leicester – opened in 2003 – was being built. The road contractors paid to dump the soil there and the mounds are now simply used as safety containment barriers for the shooting ground.

From English Civil War battlefield ... to the Global War on Terror

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Yet more clearings in woods

If you've had your appetite whetted for all these suspicious clearings in woods, then RAF Wittering near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire will "press all your buttons".

Right in the middle of innocent-looking Collyweston Great Wood nearby, you'll find a large remote weapons storage area for the airbase. The depot (below) is not marked on any OS maps, not even at 1:10000 scale. Furthermore, check out the former nuclear weapons area at Wittering along with more clearings, concealing other weapons areas, at Vigo Wood and Rogue Sale. They are all situated to the north east of Collyweston Great Wood, alongside the A47 main road. See if you can spot them on Google Earth by panning around.

Next, pop over to RAF Marham near Kings Lynn in Norfolk and take a very close look to the east of the airbase. There's nothing on 1:50000 OS maps, but at 1:25000 and 1:10000 scales you'll see a very suspicious empty rectangle close to Hangour Hill.

Yes, it's RAF Marham's very own remote weapons store, hidden from public view on the ground by some handy tree plantations. When viewed from above, it's another story (further below). The secure depot is connected into Marham's north east gate, but it can also be reached using an unmarked track off the Roman Road running east towards Swaffham along the south side of the airfield.

Think back to Kineton again but look further afield. Actually one "field" in particular to the north west alongside Fosse Way, between the villages of Moreton Morrell and Lighthorne. The clearing in the copse known as Lighthorne Rough is the old remote weapons store for the former RAF Gaydon (now the vehicle proving ground and motor heritage centre). The neighbouring village of Lighthorne Heath was originally the married quarters for the main WWII airbase. Compare imagery from 1999 and 2007 and you will spot some modern buildings in amongst the old munitions bunkers. But it is thought that the site is now used for industrial purposes rather than military.

Finally, consider RAF Sculthorpe near Fakenham in Norfolk. The former USAF bomber base is obviously clearly marked on 1:50000 scale OS maps but in Summer 2007, there was still some "airbrushing" going on. Another remote weapons store can be found over on the north east side in some "empty" farmer's fields near Cranmer Hall. It only emerges on the more detailed OS 1:25000 data and if you have a pilot's licence, you can get a perfect Pilot's Eye View too.

Summary and Conclusion

You can have great fun by using the Internet research tools to search for Britain's "secret sites". As I've outlined throughout this website, it is always worth remembering that OS maps don't always tell the whole story, depending on which version and scale you're viewing. In the case of top secret sites, OS maps don't even tell the truth sometimes. Shocking.

In November 2004, I noticed that Ordnance Survey had started to revise the online mapping data on their Get-a-map site. Suddenly, "Secret Bases" such as HMS Forest Moor (next to RAF Menwith Hill) in North Yorkshire, NATO's Satellite Ground Terminal at Oakhanger in Hampshire and the Defence Munitions Centre at Dean Hill in Wiltshire appeared on OS 1:25000 scale maps. Could it be that they are finally taking notice of the issues raised in this page? Well yes, it certainly seems so.

In January 2005, the online 1:25000 maps from Ordnance Survey's Get-a-map service suddenly started showing both AWE Burghfield and AWE Aldermaston (with the classic label "Depot") in full detail. This means that AWE Burghfield has returned to OS maps after a record breaking 30 year absence. The dawning of a new era indeed, with the timing immaculate – to coincide with the full introduction of the UK Government's Freedom of Information Act.

An Ordnance Survey spokeswoman told me in January 2005 that AWE Burghfield was scheduled to be added to the 1:50000 scale Landranger map number 175 "in early 2006". I was told that the QinetiQ SIGINT enclave at Defford, Worcestershire would be added to the 1:25000 scale Explorer map number 190 "in December 2005", whilst on the 1:50000 Landranger map number 150 it was "noted for inclusion at the next regular update".

As 2005 progressed, in addition to the 1:25000 scale data, the OS 1:50000 maps suddenly started revealing the buildings making up the massive Government research laboratory at Fort Halstead, Kent. How ironic that before the Defford SIGINT enclave had a chance to appear on any OS maps, QinetiQ informed me in June 2005 that the site had been disposed of and the lease had been taken on by West Mercia Police. Just as they'd promised me, Ordnance Survey revised the 1:25000 data on Get-a-map in December 2005, to finally reveal the secure SIGINT area at Defford. But the new openness was too late.

In July 2006, the Burghfield atomic weapons site finally made it back onto OS maps at 1:50000 scale after three decades in the secrecy wilderness. In the same major revision of OS data, the famous North Yorkshire "early warning" station at RAF Fylingdales was included on 1:50000 maps too.

Media Hysteria with a Twist in the Tale

You may remember that my "Secret Bases" website disappeared suddenly and in mysterious circumstances in June 2004. To find out the truth about what really went on and to read about an ironic and amusing Twist in the Tale that occurred in October 2004, take a while to explore my updated Media Hysteria Page by clicking on the button below.

Media Calm after the Storm

In a balanced article called "Ghost Bases", the story of the Media Hysteria surrounding my "Secret Bases" website was covered in a major feature in the December 2004 issue (Number 30) of Eye Spy Magazine.

Eye Spy is the world's leading magazine serving the global intelligence community and is also read by Government departments.

Click on the button below to see the previews of the article on my "Eye Spy" Page

My Eye Spy "UK Secrets" series

As a direct result of that piece in Eye Spy Magazine, in early 2005 the editor commissioned me to write a series of articles under the banner "UK Secrets". In the series, which ran throughout Spring and Summer 2005, I discussed further all the themes covered in that Ghost Bases feature and used my research tools to reveal exciting new material not found on my "Secret Bases" website.

Following a suitable time after each article in the series appeared in Eye Spy, it then also appeared on my website. You can view each of my UK Secrets articles by clicking on the relevant link below and you can also find full details on my Eye Spy Page.

• Eye Spy UK Secrets 1: "TEMPEST and QinetiQ" – Electronic eavesdropping counter-measures
• Eye Spy UK Secrets 2: "Watching the Watchers" – Where does MI5 get its cars serviced?
• Eye Spy UK Secrets 3: "Testing Trade Tools" – Where Britain tests its tools of the war trade
• Eye Spy "Secret Britain" 2007 Special Feature – GCHQ's new facility is refused planning permission

Bibliography and other links

• www.armedforces.co.uk/armyindex.php
• www.armedforces.co.uk/modindex.php
• www.armedforces.co.uk/navyindex.php
• www.armedforces.co.uk/rafindex.php

• www.awe.co.uk
• www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/underground_city/
• www.buncefieldinvestigation.gov.uk
• www.cryptome.org/eyeball/index.html
• www.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/emergencies-severe-weather/emergencies/emergencies-pdfs/portland-port-nuclear-reactor-emergency-plan.pdf
• www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects/boscombe.htm
• www.dsma.uk
• www.fas.org
• www.gchq.gov.uk
• www.globalsecurity.org
• www.gov.uk/government/organisations/defence-science-and-technology-laboratory
• www.gov.uk/government/organisations/national-security
• www.gov.uk/guidance/ministry-of-defence-film-locations
• www.gov.uk/guidance/porton-down-volunteers-requesting-information
• www.hmgcc.gov.uk
• www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4463.htm  [part 1 of 2]
• www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4464.htm  [part 2 of 2]
• uk-intel.pdf (both parts together in PDF format)
  
  This excellent article, originally found in two parts on the Information Clearing House website, was researched and compiled by Richard Bennett and edited by his journalist daughter Kate. Richard is a researcher, writer and broadcaster whose activities date back to 1968. The article contains some 50,000 words and is a "bible" for anyone interested in the subjects covered in my website. The original article was first published in Summer 2003 and has since been massively updated and expanded. The latest revision of Richard's work currently contains some 100 million words and forms a key part of the ISDB – International Security Database.
• www.issee.co.uk
• www.lamont.me.uk/capenhurst/
• www.linewatch.org.uk
• www.mi5.gov.uk
• www.mi6.gov.uk
• www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/WhatWeDo/DefenceEstateandEnvironment/Nancekuke/
• www.portsdown-tunnels.org.uk
• www.qinetiq.com
• www.sis.gov.uk
• www.subbrit.org.uk
• www.thebunker.net

Disclaimer: The presence of an external link is purely for information purposes only. No endorsement of editorial content, or any views expressed, is implied and none should be inferred.