I was walking through Belsize Park at the weekend on my way to meet my Son and I noticed this rather strange looking building. It looked very 30s/40s in style and although now a data-storage facility I did wonder what it was originally built for. A bit of googling revealed that it was originally a WW2 deep bomb shelter, connected to the Northern Line which runs parallel to Haverstock Hill it also goes much deeper than the underground. Amazingly it was designed in 1942 and could accommodate 9600 people and extends to 140ft below ground. There are a couple of these in London, built in residential areas and consisting of sleeping quarters, medical facilities, kitchens and self contained power units, hopefully consigned to history such shelters will only now ever be used to store things like computer data archives etc., but the way the world seems to be headed at the moment who knows!
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