The Giant, Imaginary Citadel Under Hyde Park

Taking cover in a flight of fancy.
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jagohazzard
Patreon: / jagohazzard

[@rgbaal]

The sand would have been there against shock not gas. Sand would have had no effect against gas that damp ground could not have done better. Sand however works very well against shock working with concrete like a sort of composite armour. The reason the French forts stood up to bombardment in WW1 was because the incorporated a sand shock layer - the reason the Belgium didn't was because they lacked one.

[@joohop]

Great Comment , Bless Up Buddy

[@TheSuzberry]

Ah, logic and physics: delightful with my coffee.

[@hypergolic8468]

Post war with the Atom bomb, the RAF ROTOR bunkers used Gravel for the shock absorbency. Admittedly, if you wanted to spend money on your bunkers (US Atlas missile silos / NORAD etc) then springs are used to stop the shock hitting the working areas (i.e. either placing working areas in metal structures (that act as Faraday Cages) on top of springs or hanging them from the bunker roof).

[@nicolasshaw9408]

Very interesting and educational who would have thought about that humungus Rudy hole was under Hyde park

[@BigglesAboutTown]

I’m reading a book about the French war in Vietnam (1950´s) and they’re using bags of sand to strengthen their shelters to absorb shockwaves. One underground shelter/clinic lasted 40 days under constant shelling

[@googleuser3163]

I bet there's teletubbies living down there

[@FitZhurdygurdy]

Just imagine what they could teach us

[@aDifferentJT]

Of course there are, they live next door to the wombles

[@yacan1]

*loads shotgun*

[@SportyMabamba]

Time for Tubby-Custard! 🤪

[@samuelfellows6923]

🙃

[@RogersRamblings]

Under a park seems like an excellent place to hyde a shelter.

[@t.p.mckenna]

Well you'd have to be a bit Green not to have thought of it before. I mean, even a Regent might have thought of such a scheme!

[@lindalaw5466]

I see what you did there! 😉😉

[@tbavister]

As a geophysics student at the nearby Royal School of Mines we were sent out to Hyde Park to attempt to survey the extent of the underground carpark with gravimeters. I don't recall we had much success but it made a nice change from lectures!

[@SamSitar]

what is a gravimeter?

[@Skorpychan]

@@SamSitar A measuring device for measuring the density of things by their specific gravity.

[@john1703]

@@Skorpychan Ha ha.

[@stephensaines7100]

Evidently it left you unaware of the gravity of the situation...

[@Skorpychan]

@@john1703 Not joking; Specific Gravity is actually a thing. You can tell where stuff is underground by seeing how it affects a known mass. It's like dowsing, only using advanced physics instead of the idiomotor effect and your brain somehow detecting water. Works the other way around too; you can navigate underwater by finding the not-water you don't want to collide with.

[@TadeuszCantwell]

This is like a Fallout shelter before the Fallout game, with poison gas instead of radiation.

[@PtolemyJones]

My thought too!

[@thesteelrodent1796]

a lot of the thematics for Fallout comes from various WW2 shelters. During the cold war, especially in the 1960s and again during the Cuba crisis, many countries did serious consideration into how they could upgrade their old WW2 bomb shelters to withstand nuclear bombs. if any of those plans were completed we would've likely had shelters not too dissimilar from Fallout's vaults. Just ignore all the nonsense crap Bethesda injected into the series because they don't understand or care about the Fallout universe

[@joshuabessire9169]

Imagine if they built the Hyde Park shelter, and then only let in 1 guy and a box of puppets.

[@paulketchupwitheverything767]

The French underground forts around Verdun also incorporated a layer of sand above the concrete to try to absorb the impact of falling shells rather than have all of the force transmitted into the structure.

[@adlam97531]

When my father was at Knightsbridge barracks in the 1960s , they used to have to call a underground bunker in Hyde park regularly. He never found out what it was for but was told it was an armourary. I recall him telling the story

[@googleuser3163]

It was used to contain London's rogue population teletubbies away from public view

[@FD-vj6hd]

If nothing else, this would have made a cracking tourist attraction today

[@johnclarke2997]

Doubt it. kids and copper thiefs would have trashed the place as they have done at every other abandoned facility.

[@atraindriver]

Nah. Far too large to have been effectively preserved. More likely to have been turned into secure storage for banks and the like long before there was any interest in industrial heritage. Might have made a particularly nasty prison, though; a 20th century version of the mediaeval oubliettes.

[@krashd]

@@johnclarke2997 Facilities with heavy doors located in public places are usually fine, London underground has a hundred abandoned stations and most of them look exactly as they did in 19xx because the entrance is either no longer accessible or is in the middle of a busy street/park.

[@MsGrandunion]

connecting the Piccadilly and Central lines under the park could have been useful too! But yes, it reminds me of the massive shelter under Berlin, which is indeed a big tourist attraction.

[@RichWoods23]

It would have ended up being sold by the government to a Russian oligarch via the British Virgin Islands in order to fund a penny off income tax.

[@mattc9998]

The tube lines out to stations combined with the large capacity does actually make sense if you look at the structure not as a static long-term bomb shelter shelter but as a processing facility for essentially evacuating a central London under siege from above, continuously bringing in people, temporarily housing them until transport is available while also treating wounds and then funnelling them out to the country side. Consider that if there was poison gas it's likely city life would have been so heavily disrupted it wouldn't have functioned. Bombs were of course devastating but the impact was instantaneous and contained to a specific area. Gas moves and lingers, and if they saw the presence of gas as so large that there was a fear it would penetrate the clay and even concrete then it sounds like they foresaw London rendered uninhabitable by an almost permanent cloud of gas.

[@googleuser3163]

no

[@Damien.D]

Interesting story of what was envisioned like a nuclear shelter straight from the Fallout videogames franchise but decades before the cold war, and even a decade before the A-bomb ever existed! I'd call that well thought anticipation. Meanwhile the madman with a moustache was really fond of building large caves with train access protected by massive blast doors. I know at least two in France, have visited one (a still used railway tunnel converted as a shelter for Hitler's personal train...), the other one being a V1 assembly plant. And there is the infamous Mittelwerk, and also the massive network of tunnels under Wałbrzych in Poland. If WWII had continued into a decades long stalemate, nazis would have probably turned into some kind of half-blind mole-rats, and we french would have a direct metro line from Paris to Berlin.

[@theenigmaticst7572]

Fallout London definitely needs to have this in their game!

[@malcolmabram2957]

I love your dry humour. My dog was debating whether dark energy was real with another dog the other day. But it was not in Hyde Park.

[@cncshrops]

Well Physics is a somewhat less controversial topic than politics. Good for Inter-canine relations.

[@jezwilde2376]

He needs to go back to the Lab

[@theenigmaticst7572]

It wasn't in Barking, was it?

[@malcolmabram2957]

@@theenigmaticst7572 It was in Labrador Bay, Devon.

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

His argument was a bit ‘rough’ though…

[@SwitchbackSylveon]

Sounds like an idea an artilleryman would have during an invasion from Mars, just needs a railway tunnel to the coast, as well as a place to play cricket.

[@GafftheHorse]

I was reminded of the Artillery man too.

[@seanmurphy5770]

There is actually a tunnel going from the foreign office to Buckingham palace branching off to wellington barracks under birdcage walk,built in WWII,i have seen it once a long time ago.

[@tonys1636]

There are tunnels linking all the Whitehall Ministries, Downing Street and Parliament which is also linked to the Norman Shaw building, then New Scotland Yard, now office space for MP's. The ivy covered concrete structure just behind the Admiralty and beside Admiralty Arch, known as 'The Citadel', is the entrance to the deep subterranean complex of War Rooms and the start of these tunnels. Some of the War Rooms are open to the public at certain times. Like the Cenotaph built under temporary Planning Consent. All done under the gaze of Admiral Lord Nelson.

[@seanmurphy5770]

@@tonys1636 I do not doubt it

[@Thommygun-qv7um]

As a german I really had a good laugh about the minority complex from that particular individual. That is one big reason why I like your videos: the dry british humor. And also the fact, they are really well researched as well my good sir. Keep it up!

[@ten-bob-note]

Your “Cemetery, Pick & Shovel” quip is the best gag that I’ve heard in ages! I laughed out loud, causing the nurses and other patients (in the lunatic asylum, which passes for a general hospital) to stare at me. Keep up the good work Tom, it is very much appreciated.

[@GreenJimll]

Of course after the second world war, the UK Government did indeed build an unfeasibly large underground citadel. Only it wasn't for the public and it wasn't in London. It did have a rail connection though. For those who've not heard of this, look up the Government in War HQ in the old underground quarries at Corsham. The code name changed several times, as did the extent of the plans, but looking for the code words "TURNSTILE" or "BURLINGTON" should get you in the right sort of places. The plans at one point were nearly as crazy as this pre-war Hyde Park plan: only a very select group knew about the HQ and, if the Cold War had turned hot, thousands of civil servants and telephone operators would have received instructions to pack a suitcase, kiss their families goodbye and take Government assigned transport to a special posting. They'd only find out about Corsham when they got there. Oddly though, one group of people who did know about it were the GPO telephone engineers. The complex required a vast manual switchboard and miles of cabling to allow it to communicate and control what was left of a nuclear wasteland that was once the UK. The switchboard operators could just be picked and sent there in the days/hours before the bombs dropped. But the engineers needed to wire all the exchanges and switchboards up for them, which would take weeks or months and also required maintenance, so they had to go down and do that well in advance. The cover story for the rest of the site was that it was a "secret" storage facility, which is partly true: it was storing the materials that would be unpacked and used inside it. A secret hiding an even more secret secret.

[@highpath4776]

nice to know ones taxes pay for the survival prospects of others

[@imwithstupid00011]

@@highpath4776 welcome to the real world.

[@robertmcgovern8850]

See: Dr Strangelove.😄 I'd love to know their plans for waste disposal, both trash and sewage. 10k peeps in a tin can make a LOT of dunny. Lifting pumps running to Fleet Ditch?

[@atraindriver]

Ah, Corsham. Where the civil serpents and selected politicians could have watched as all their careful plans would have disintegrated because they were based on a combination of poorly informed military assessments *** and the civil service's own ridiculous assumptions such as expecting shire counties to send columns of ambulances into destroyed cities (fair enough) but those ambulance columns being planned to be made up of significantly more ambulances than the shire counties concerned ever actually had. *** When the Soviet archives were opened up for a short while at the end of the Cold War, western researchers discovered that the Soviets were actually intending to drop about three times the tonnage of nukes on the UK - as a minimum - than the British planners had considered (read: dismissed) as the outlying worst case scenario. There's a well researched book called The Secret State by Peter Hennessy which goes into detail about Britain's 1960s plans to deal with nuclear attack. Suffice it to say that (as those of us who watched Threads back in 1984 realised with horror), the lucky ones would have been those who died when the bombs hit. The survivors would have wished they hadn't - and the occupants of Corsham would rapidly have found themselves utterly irrelevant.

[@aloysiussnailchaser272]

Allegedly there is also the bunker code-named Pindar under Whitehall. This caused some difficulty when the Jubilee line was being planned, as the planners certainly knew there was something there but it was difficult or impossible to know exactly where. I was told by a former transport planner about a meeting he had with an unnamed government functionary who at a closed room meeting produced a classified map showing details. The request for a copy of the map got the response that you can look at it but that’s all. No copy, no notes to be taken. Allegedly the alignment was arrived at by drawings being made by the planners of where they’d like it to go. These were shown to the powers that be who suggested acceptable alternatives. I notice that as you arrive at Westminster station on the Jubilee line from Waterloo there’s a side tunnel between the stations that leads northish, in the direction of Portcullis House, as far as I can tell. I wonder where that goes.

[@justahillbilly7777]

A new Jago Hazzard video means it’s time to learn.

[@johnfry1011]

I’m slightly surprised that there wasn’t a plan to take over the Womble burrows under Wimbledon Common…

[@barrieshepherd7694]

How do you know they didn't ? 😂

[@Dave_Sisson]

I'm confident Jago will cover that in the next episode on the subject.

[@18robsmith]

@@Dave_Sisson Don't you mean "Jago will dig into them in the next episode on the subject"?

[@samuelfellows6923]

🙃

[@coop_coop007]

A not wholly dissimilar version of this was built in Switzerland in, I think, the 80's. Capacity was circa 20k persons. It failed to seal on a test exercise. Not sure where it is/was.

[@ZGryphon]

The Swiss sure do like to put things under their mountains. They built a nuclear power plant in a cave once, too. That worked out about as well as you'd expect.

[@clockwork9827]

there is an excellent article in the NewYorker archives about the preparedness of the Swiss

[@reddwarfer999]

@@ZGryphon Pretty well I'd expect. Knowing the Swiss.

[@coop_coop007]

@@clockwork9827 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenberg_Tunnel I am told there is a TV prog about this, but am yet to find it.

[@jimfrodsham7938]

My dad had the illustrated London news on subscription when I was a kid, I graduated from just enjoying the pictures to actually being able to read it. I'm sure it probably helped me learn to read at an early age. I think it was still in circulation when I joined up in '68 I'm sure I still read it then. Didn't most Londoners use the tube stations as bomb shelters? My gran in Liverpool had an Anderson shelter at the end of her garden that I played in on holiday from Germany.

[@JasperJanssen]

The underground stations were certainly used as shelters, but I don’t know that it was the majority of londoners, there’s only so many that fit in there.

[@TheIronArmenianakaGIHaigs]

This is just a request but do you know anything about "The Guns of Primrose Hill" ? There is not much information online about their wartime use or when they were removed.

[@JagoHazzard]

I’m not familiar with that one I’m afraid.

[@TheIronArmenianakaGIHaigs]

@@JagoHazzard Oksy no worries, thank you for the reply

[@russellnixon9981]

@@JagoHazzard Navy 5.5" A A guns in twin turrets. Spear stock used on battleships. I think two were installed. There's some odd concrete which looks ww2 period in Richmond park which could be shelters or magazines for AA batteries.

[@grahamunderwood9353]

a lot of the high areas around london were used for anti aircraft batteries bostall woods in abbey wood had some in some of the old google earth photos you could see lines showing up where they had had power cables running most of these guns were removed at the end of the war there were also balloons put up at many of these sites to try and deter low flying aircraft

[@highpath4776]

@@JagoHazzard There were Post WW1 tanks donated to villiages or towns that had raised funds for tanks . The tanks were de-activated due to fears of post WW1 revolutions and later removed prob for WW2 scrap,, as to if Primrose Hill had one I dont know

[@AnthonyHigham6414001080]

The underground car park accessed from the north bound carriageway of Park Lane (the A4202) between Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch is estimated to be 126,000m² in size - that's 31 acres, or about 5% of Hyde Park's total area on a single level. The spoil removed was used to construct the new M4 between Brentford and Slough in 1963/4 A well informed person told me that it was built as a cover for a much larger structure that was constructed deep below it. Who knows what the truth is? I guess we will never find out, certainty not in my life time.

[@librarian16]

I lived in Bingley, in West Yorkshire during the war. An air raid shelter was built just outside the station. When the time came to demolish it they found that the concrete slab forming the roof was not connected to the walls. If a bomb had fallen near the shelter it is likely that everyone in the shelter would have been crushed.

[@cncshrops]

Jerry-built?

[@librarian16]

@@cncshrops Definitely. It was the worst I saw but there were plenty of examples of poor building.

[@samuelfellows6923]

😱 - ⚠️, so it wouldn’t have worked as a bomb shelter

[@librarian16]

@@samuelfellows6923 That's fine.

[@Echoj2]

Dogs do indeed argue about politics while in the park... Its seems they are pretty evenly spilt between the Labouradors and the Consermastiffs lately.

[@SportyMabamba]

Seems to me a bit daft putting your life-critical machinery on the top floor closest to the bombs. I’d have swapped the storage level to the top; easier to replace blast-damaged rations and blankets than ventilation equipment and oxygen tanks (to say nothing of the fire risk)!

[@francisboyle1739]

Common, any engineer worth their salt would put the heavy equipment on the top floor especially if the structural integrity of the structure is likely to be compromised in some way.

[@atraindriver]

With 60 feet (~20 metres) of concrete between the bombs and that top floor, it's fairly unlikely that even the largest bombs would have done any significant damage. The most powerful bunker-buster bomb created by the RAF during WW2 (the Disney bomb) managed about a quarter of that, and Barnes Wallis's Tallboy and Grand Slam were found to work best if they hit alongside the target, creating a void alongside and below the target for it to collapse into, rather than to hit the target directly. It would be difficult to create a void large enough for a significant piece of Hyde Park to fall into...

[@RichWoods23]

@@atraindriver We call that the Serpentine, don't we?

[@jeremypreece870]

That delightful introduction took so long that, as the trees attest, the commentary that begins in late spring / early summer at 0:00 by 1:49 has turned to autumn.

[@peebee143]

Perhaps the sand barrier on top was to allow gas particulate residue on the soil surface to dissipate sideways and away from the shelter when showered with rain water. I believe that one of the treatments upon finding gas contaminated soil / ground or flooring was to flush the affected area with copious amounts of water. (Might have some picture cigarette cards of various ARP in the house somewhere.).....(Ever thought of researching & doing a video on the old Tobacco / Brewing firms of London??)

[@clockwork9827]

well they do say brackish water can be filtered through to make more potable

[@michaeldarby3503]

This may have been one of Spike Milligans Fathers proposal, apparently he and his brother Desmond came up with lots of plans.

[@HuggyBob62]

Interesting to be reminded how long it took to build Crossrail - but then we weren't at war. Talking of bombs, the Battle of Britain Bunker in Uxbridge is absolutely fascinating. Walkable from the tube station, I believe.

[@adamhenley8295]

Used to love living near Hyde park as a kid - dad and I would play football using 2 mature trees as goalposts We couldn’t afford jumpers 😉😂

[@hyperdistortion2]

Fascinating stuff as always! What an amazing, and amazingly impractical, concept. I’m always fascinated that ‘war gases’ weren’t used for the simple reason that the Wehrmacht still relied on horses for logistics, much more than the British or French. Use of gas would have prompted a response in kind, which would have devastated the German supply chains.

[@18robsmith]

Ah, but that could so easily have been one of a whole series of large occupied holes under parks in and around London. Say Regent's Park, Hampstead Heath for two. All interconnected by deep-level electric railways. Why indeed should one ever stray into the sunlight?

[@RichWoods23]

To snatch Eloi, of course.

[@1973Washu]

This sounds like an excellent premise for an alternate history novel.

[@brian9731]

But there IS a huge cavernous car park down a long tunnel under Hyde Park. I was in there only yesterday. I believe it belongs to Westminster City Council but it is run by parking company Q-Park. Ironically (if you're still holding a grudge against Germans 77 years after VE Day), a large chunk of it is rented out to German car manufacturer, BMW, who have their showrooms on the far side of Park Lane. There's even a handy pedestrian subway to get across the impenetrable 24/7 wall of traffic which is Park Lane.

[@andypughtube]

Rumour has it that there is _something_ under Hyde Park. There is certainly a network of tunnels underneath Imperial College linking to the Science Museum and RAH (I explored them extensively as a student). As the story goes, whatever is under the park was used as a practical example for an Imperial College undergraduate Geophysics exercise every year, until they were told to run the exercise somewhere else.

[@peterjohncooper]

Excellent use of some pretty pictures of Hyde park. Nice juxtaposition with the grim subject. Another fascinating little nugget.

[@dodgydruid]

In the later Cold War, us warriors were always told if the 4 min warning went, find a Lloyds bank as many had shelters attached and you had to learn the phrase that pays which was changed intermittently or have your MoD ID card handy or out with the nukes you would be. Now the real "citadel" is under Whitehall, grown after WW2 to huge proportions it is alleged with Thatcher seeing it such a huge money pit ordered it scaled back and scaled back until it was a tiny portion of its post war size that it had grown to, whole civil service departments could be sheltered in this place and the seat of command maintained via trunk underground communication lines and also entrances or exits found onto the Northern line tunnels, Horse Guards, Buck House for military/royals. Now my late grandfather talked about it as did my father, my grandfather was a GLC executive (old GLC not the new one) for water and sewerage in London which included oversight for flood command, my late father he was a rostered emergency railway signaller who did stuff at Orpington regional railway command and I believe he was also passed out for Redhill RRC, when both mention this abject sized citadel under Whitehall I believe them but we will never know.

[@michaelcampin1464]

We had an air raid shelter in our back garden with oriiginal beds in the 1960s etc etc etc

[@tenterdentown2452]

Thanks for tackling this unusual subject in your usual inimitable and laconic style!

[@sbv-zs7wz]

I've heard that there is a 'complex' underground in the holborn/chancery lane area similar to this, that was in use by certain security services, now defunct but possibly to be repurposed for the Holborn station rebuild

[@AFCManUk]

A class 313 Great Northern at Highbury & Islington 4:45 ? Yes. Definitely old stock footage, Mr. Jago ;)

[@JagoHazzard]

How dare you, that’s my private train!

[@AndrewG1989]

Now replaced by the modern Class 717 Desiro City :D

[@samuelfellows6923]

😀☺️

[@luxford60]

Wow. Never heard of that before. Would have been amazing if it had been built.

[@princecharon]

Amazingly expensive, but on the other hand, it would have put many Brits to work at a time when unemployment was fairly high (if I'm understanding the dates right).

[@favesongslist]

I believe part of it was built, under the underground Hyde park car park.

[@Voltaic_Fire]

It would have been something to behold, something straight out of Fallout.

[@jgodfrey546]

Absolutely fascinating, Jago! Well done!

[@ReubenAshwell]

Hyde park is indeed a delightful park, I can't imagine dogs arguing about politics though lol. Anyway I had no clue they even had plans to make a giant thing under that park until now.

[@stephensaines7100]

[Hyde park is indeed a delightful park, I can't imagine dogs arguing about politics though lol.] Ever heard of'The Dogs of War'?

[@ReubenAshwell]

@@stephensaines7100 Don't think I've heard of it until you mentioned it lol

[@Robslondon]

Love this; really interesting find Jago. Have you heard the rumour about The Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens? Apparently trees were cut back in the 1950s so it could be used as a potential emergency runway; a way of evacuating the Royal Family if the Cold War turned hot!

[@AndrewG1989]

Maybe you and Jago Hazzard could compete with each other if that's possible :)

[@peebee143]

There is an underground car park accessible off Park Lane, just by Hyde Park. Back in the heady 80's it was possible to obtain security patrolled parking space in the aforementioned car park for £8....The fee to park aalll daay looong!! Just imagine the cost now.

[@KomradZX1989]

Superb video! I loved all of it. I enjoy your attention to detail and how you get into the minds of people back then. You earned a new subscriber in me! Cheers from St. Louis, USA

[@christopherlawley1842]

l once visited Belton Braces. It's definitely worth talking about

[@Graham-ce2yk]

Interesting video, definitely looking forward to the videos covering the other propsed 'deep level shelters'. Also looking forward to one on the shelters actually built. One claim I've seen is that the shelters built, were not stations for the 'Deep District Line' but the running tunnels.

[@daveconyard8946]

Thank you. Jago Keep safe,

[@TheLondonForever00]

The dog part at the start of the video got you a sub. Superb 👌

[@iankemp1131]

There was a rumour that Sir Edward Watkin in the 1890s planned a big London Central station on a line linking the Great Central Metropolitan and South Eastern railways, and it would have been above Hyde Park.

[@joohop]

Humankind Have Been Subterranean Creatures From Time Immemorial Bless Up Jago

[@davep5698]

would make an amazing setting for a video game though. Imagine if the UK government at the time had contacted VaultTec and proposed a very different kind of experimental vault, one that was a functional city, much larger and more complex than their pervious efforts.

[@favesongslist]

Check out Burlington Bunker: Britain's secret underground city

[@tombullen5676]

Beautiful

[@vlu855]

Loved the filming

[@teecefamilykent]

This...I was not aware of...well done sir, well done!

[@nw5835]

I had heard that The Wombles were quite concerned that should this idea spread to the suburbs.................................

[@nawbus]

Fascinating - thank you for sharing this. Nice to see footage of the Northern City Branch - one of your favourite lines I guess?

[@JagoHazzard]

It's one I'm rather fond of, because it's kind of spooky-looking and at weekends, very quiet.

[@bentilbury2002]

The politics of dogs are no laughing matter; some dogs hold very radical opinions. Of course, most dogs think they're barking.

[@peterjansen7929]

The bone of contention is that they call each other SOBs and then they either fight or a diplomat persuades them to pool their aggression and chase a cat instead.

[@SS-qo4xe]

Excellent as usual

[@stephenhester9804]

Things that don't makes sense from an Engineering or Logical Standpoint... Jago, welcome to the Building Industry, I worked in it for 11 Years.

[@Kunjo79]

I believe there is a shelter somewhere underneath Avondale Park in west London. It’s a small park near Holland Park surrounded by housing

[@barbaraprest783]

Very enjoyable 👏

[@samuellawrencesbookclub8250]

From a strategic perspective, having an outbound rail system, as a means of escape, does make sense. Aside from anything else, large as it would have been this shelter would still have a limit to the amount of people it can accommodate. In a time of war it could well become necessary to remove non-essential personnel to other shelters in the city, or out of the city altogether. The bit I don't get is why they put the hospital, and the vital machinery at the top. It makes more sense to keep the most essential equipment, like the machines, and medical stuff, deeper down, where - if bombs or gas are dropped - the equipment, the medical staff, and the vulnerable sick people in the hospitals, are most likely to go unaffected. The most sensible layout would have supplies, and machinery, and hospitals lower down, then normal residential, with the admin section closest to the surface.

[@WMD4929]

I saw an artist's impression of this a few years ago at the Bankside Gallery, cut away so that you could see the various layers and levels. So it at least caught his imagination.

[@Jimyjames73]

Interesting = there used to be a Game on thr BBC Micro Computer called "Citadel"!!! 🤔🚂🚂🚂

[@barbaralamson7450]

Love it.

[@admirald2680]

Good one Jago 👍

[@GeorgeChoy]

thanks for the history lesson

[@MrElbarto75]

Ok, this video might be one of your best

[@googleuser3163]

I have a feeling there's uncontacted teletubbies hiding down there

[@MrElbarto75]

@@googleuser3163 I know ... They didn't fall at roswell as everyone thinks. They fall at Grimsby, and since they are locked down by the government under hide park and used as lab rats between two tv shows ( where they clearly seems to be drugged and molested ) since one of them escaped in public and started to dance completely stoned on the mall. They had no choice but turn this into a commercial event ... this is how the horror began for them. They were also forced to breed with the slaves of elmo's cult during an horrible amount of orgies.

[@JagoHazzard]

Thanks!

[@isashax]

Wow never heard of that before. Really bizarre.

[@danielrodding8522]

Berlin actually has some underground shelters near/connected to underground railway lines. Some of them were built together with the "200-km-plan" for the underground railway network in the 1970s, like the one at S+U Rathaus Steglitz (southern terminus of the U9 line). However, they're actually not in a usable state. German authorities consider reactivation of bunkers and similar shelters. Probably we'll see a revival in the next years.

[@favesongslist]

SEE "Germany begins upgrading bunker system in wake of Russian invasion of Ukraine"

[@theajshortman]

Have you heard about the post office tube railway? I was listening to an audio book called Domain by James Herbert (Rats trilogy) and there is a nuclear attack on London, the hero's managed to get to a shelter and they mentioned the postal tube railway... Of course I thought of this channel! Apparently it closed in 2003 and one can take a ride on it via the Postal Museum. Learn something new everyday! Great video BTW love the boundless speculation!

[@JagoHazzard]

It's one I do want to cover in the future - in fact, I have quite a bit of footage of some of the retired trains.

[@favesongslist]

@@JagoHazzard Looking forward to it. TY for all your great videos,

[@richardmattocks]

I’ve often heard there is a huge series of tunnels under London, probably just an urban legend I admit as the whole idea is clearly crazy. I mean, what could they be used for? 🤣

[@sid35gb]

Yes there are huge underground tunnels in London rumour has it there’s a whole train network running through these underground tunnels 😎

[@dominicyelin]

Um, no its a fact. There is a network of tunnels under almost every city in Europe. There's the Paris catacombs. There are tunnels under my city here in Norwich and London also, famously, has its own abandoned, closed off and secret tunnels as well as a huge network of well known tunnels, some of which remain quite easy to get in to and there are many photos of urban explorers' travels in them that you can look up on the internet, if you want.

[@richardmattocks]

@@dominicyelin I know. I think you may have missed the subtly of my post, it was a joke at the expense of having an entire underground train network being an equally amazing idea.😎

[@dominicyelin]

@@richardmattocks ah, you're joking, right. I don't understand the concept of willingly posting something lighthearted to KZbin sorry. I only post in an incredibly distressed state and its without all of my faculties and more a symptom of some kind of mental health disorder than any kind of consensual desire to even use the internet at all, really. So there's simply no chance of me having any kind of a sense of humour at all at those times, I'm sorry. No idea how anyone could even... Sorry, ignore and disregard me, thanks.

[@milesrout]

I suppose it's such common knowledge in the UK that you didn't think you would need to mention it, but I'm still surprised you didn't mention that the Tube was used for air raid sheltering. So in the end, funnily enough, lots of air raid shelters did indeed have railway connections :)

[@reddwarfer999]

Why should he mention it? This was about a very specific proposal about Hyde Park, nothing to do about the later use of Tube stations as air raid shelters.

[@milesrout]

@@reddwarfer999 Because as I said, lots of air raid shelters did ironically have railway connections by virtue of being deep level tube stations :)

[@markmcwalter8772]

How about a series of videos on nuclear bunkers of the London Civil Defence Region? Might be interesting to hear about the Civil Defence Control Centres that were built in case of a nuclear attack. Some are quite odd like Pear Tree House, some more conventional like the one in New Eltham. Just a suggestion if bunkers are in vogue.

[@JagoHazzard]

This is an idea I’ve been playing with for a while. It’s a really interesting topic, the only problem is, it’s such a big topic.

[@markmcwalter8772]

@@JagoHazzard Yes it certainly is! I suppose it could be told in a way that introduces the Civil Defence situation in London during the Cold War and then perhaps a few videos on some of the more interesting shelters (Pear Tree House has to be up there). I believe each London Borough was grouped with two or three others. They could be broken into sub-sectors but I suppose that may become a bit repetitive. Anyway, just a suggestion on what I think is a fascinating topic during an interesting point in time. As a Cold War historian I may be biased though!

[@AH-sr5px]

@@markmcwalter8772 Pindar site under Whitehall is the one to understand it mission. Everything about this bunker is wrong, i.e by the river, publicly known and a primary target above it.

[@trevorrandom]

Very interesting indeed ☺️👍

[@keithorchard3137]

Intriguing to say the least, Jago !

[@clockwork9827]

thanks for the wartime view of the docks & warehouses. enlightening. also, yikes for the scheme. wasnt there a lot of discussion before underground shelters were put into use ?

[@pras12100]

"No-one likes getting blown to pieces while going about their daily business" (1:42) - This is my thought for the day🤔😉

[@GodPikachu]

I seem to recall some of thos metal ribbed tunnels being used as shooting locations for Blakes 7

[@menshevik1012]

Fascinating video. How did they imagine powering this huge complex, they must have needed coal or oil silos of a similar size if they planned to stay for any length of time.

[@cycklist]

Nice to see a video not primarily about trains 👍

[@grahamwhitworth9454]

Why?

[@eekee6034]

If I'd been alive at the time, I would have been one of the people coming up with shelter designs. It's a fun thing to do, though the accompanying sense of inflation of one's self-worth is of mixed value. I have to admit the quality of my proposals might have varied considerably, depending on how much information I had managed to absorb at the time. As to shelter mentality, I tried to shelter myself away from the outside world for years; I had a very engaging online life, but I could never quite resist the twin temptations of the sun and nature's beauty. But having worn myself out with the outdoors for now, I might just return to a corner of that online life to build a digital model of an underground citadel. But perhaps I'll build it in an 80s style.

[@minxythemerciless]

Hyde Park was most likely chosen due to its proximity to the Toff suburbs, Kensington, Mayfair, Belgravia etc.

[@quantisedspace7047]

If built, this would have made a great place for a Nightingale Hospital.

[@asheland_numismatics]

Still loving these videos. 👍 Please include rabbit footage if ever possible. 🐰🐇😊👍

[@Sterlingjob]

I’ve heard there is an underground stabling yard and the household Calvary have a large vehicle park under the park. There is probably more stuff under there!

[@jamesballantyne8349]

Is that a Mandarin duck at around 3.40?

[@JagoHazzard]

I believe so.

[@dambrooks7578]

As I grew up in an Essex village, close to what was then, but now promotes itself as, a secret nuclear bunker. Not to forgetting the proximity of the anti aircraft guns, a top a hill...

[@greebo7857]

That particular German might well have been touchy, but a gentleman he was not.

[@amccarter83]

'a touchy gentleman in Germany' is probably the greatest understatement ever said. I actually spat out my drink

[@stevev3664]

That shot of the Albert Hall is deceptive. It looks like it’s in the park but is actually outside on the opposite side of Kensington Road.

[@huw3851]

To be honest this idea sounds like a silly puff-piece to fill column inches during a slow news period. It probably belongs in one of the old style kids comics of the time or as a background for a story by Mr. Wells.

[@JagoHazzard]

I suspect so. Fun to consider, though.

[@Wahian1]

US TV personality Jerry Springer was born in a fallout shelter which is why his place of birth is Highgate underground station.

[@GreenJimll]

What was his mother doing in a fallout shelter? It's not like we've ever needed to use those in anger.

[@Wahian1]

@@GreenJimll he was born in Feb 1944 of Jewish refugee parents who were down there with many others in London. Perhaps I should have said bomb shelter.

[@typograf62]

I think a major problem would be the time it takes to get to the shelter when the sirens sound. Apart from it not being finished just yet.

[@Ramog1000]

I mean the fear of gas makes sense, WWI saw the use of chlorine by German troopes, it was devestating.

[@andyparrott3126]

Thanks Jago, another plan I'd never heard about....... So the rumour there is a bit of a store under the park that links to the Barracks and the NCP on Park Lane is nothing to do with this one? ;-)