{"id":157,"date":"2025-09-26T13:06:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/?p=157"},"modified":"2025-09-26T13:12:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T13:12:39","slug":"fifteen-feet-underground-inside-the-portadown-nuclear-bunker-transformed-into-a-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/26\/fifteen-feet-underground-inside-the-portadown-nuclear-bunker-transformed-into-a-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifteen feet underground: Inside the Portadown nuclear bunker transformed into a museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

This article was originally published in ArmaghI on 25th August 2025. A link to the original piece can be found here:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/armaghi.com\/news\/portadown-news\/fifteen-feet-underground-inside-the-portadown-nuclear-bunker-transformed-into-a-museum\/277429<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The room is small; yet practical. There is just enough space for a bunk bed, table, cabinet, and two chairs. The walls are adorned with maps, posters entitled \u2018PROTECT AND SURVIVE\u2019, and diagrams predicting the blast damage of a ten-megaton nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was exactly what it was like in our day,\u201d says Colin Woods. He\u2019s not wrong. Standing in the nuclear bunker only a few miles outside Portadown, it would be easy to believe that the Cold War had never ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colin first climbed down the narrow shaft leading to the bunker in 1983. Back then, he was the Lead Observer for the Portadown branch of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Established in 1925, the ROC were a civil defence organisation initially responsible for monitoring aircraft flying over the UK. They played a particularly important role during the Second World War, visually tracking Luftwaffe aircraft and providing the RAF and the public with advanced warning of air raids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By the end of the war, radar had become so advanced that the visual monitoring of aircraft was no longer required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a time, it appeared as though the ROC\u2019s role in national defence had come to an end. Yet the beginning of the Cold War provided the organisation with a new purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid-1950s it was decided that, in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK, the ROC would be responsible for tracking the spread of radioactive fallout across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To protect ROC volunteers from any fallout following an attack, over fifteen-hundred underground nuclear observation posts were built across the UK, with one being built just outside Portadown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fifteen feet underground,\u201d states Colin, \u201cit\u2019s got a really solid concrete wall\u2026and of course then it\u2019s covered with dirt over the top. So the chances of getting hit with radiation down through that depth are really very small.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ROC would only fully mobilise in the event of a nuclear attack. And so, throughout his time as Lead Observer at the Portadown Post, Colin and his nine other colleagues were focused on preparing for this possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant learning how to use the complicated equipment contained within the bunker as well as taking part in UK-wide training exercises throughout the year. And the volunteers took their jobs seriously, all possessing a \u2018grab-bag\u2019 containing food, clothes, and books which they would bring with them to the bunker if a nuclear attack ever occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Colin recalls, a strike launched by the Soviet Union against the UK \u201cwas seen as a very real possibility back in those days\u2026it wasn\u2019t a game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The threat was so real in fact that Colin began having nightmares about nuclear attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember having a nightmare where I\u2019m walking down the streets of Portadown,\u201d he recalls, \u201cand there\u2019s burning stuff floating about and the place is in absolute uproar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet through volunteering with the ROC, Colin made friends who he remains in touch with to this day. It even led to him meeting his wife, who was a volunteer in the Banbridge ROC Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 11, 1991, six months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government announced that the ROC was to be disbanded as part of cuts to defence spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery single one of us were gutted,\u201d Colin recalls, \u201ceveryone was so disappointed\u2026just overnight we were dropped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For almost two decades, the bunker in Portadown was abandoned; a relic of a different age. That is, until Alistair McCann discovered it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alistair\u2019s grandfather had been a volunteer with the Observer Corps during the Second World War. In fact, he had witnessed the first Luftwaffe air raid over UK skies on October 16, 1939; tracking the movements of the German Ju 88 bombers and reporting what he saw back to RAF Fighter Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many years later, Alistair listened as his grandfather regaled him with stories about his days volunteering with the ROC. He also listened as he told him about an abandoned underground nuclear bunker located somewhere in Lurgan; a story which Alistair decided must be made up. It was only after his grandfather\u2019s death that he discovered that what he had been telling him was true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researching more about the history of the ROC, Alistair became particularly interested in the role they played during the Cold War. He discovered that the ROC had in fact built a nuclear bunker in Lurgan, but that it had then been replaced by one built near Portadown. Discovering that the Portadown bunker had not yet been destroyed, Alistair decided to renovate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scouring eBay to source the equipment needed to successfully complete the restoration, Alistair quickly built up a prolific catalogue of Cold War era memorabilia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a single piece of equipment used in Northern Ireland (during the Cold War) that I don\u2019t have,\u201d he states, \u201cit has taken over my life\u2026but I like doing it because it\u2019s so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, having restored the bunker to its former glory, Alistair opened it to the public as a free-to-enter museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Post is 90% exactly how it was,\u201d he says, \u201call the equipment is original, there\u2019s nothing that\u2019s a replica.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spending tens of thousands of his own savings renovating the bunker, his motivation has only ever been to teach people about the history of the local area: \u201cI\u2019ve always had a fascination with history \u2013 and this keeps the flame alive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in ArmaghI on 25th August 2025. A link to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/padraigcorrigan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}