Neasden Bunker

The Paddock – Alternative Cabinet War Rooms

The walls were once thick with fur, heaped with steeping mould. Now, the mould is more subtle – it creeps out like sprigs of hair around the doors and then on the other side a kind of fungi appears, a tropical purple and yellow. From the ceiling, white spikes hang like icicles, but in other places, if you look up, the fluffy mould attempts to recapture the ceiling, lurking like a net.

The floors are puddled, muddy, and everywhere there is rust, there is decay. Smashed-up doors lie on their sides, with rusted handles, function gone. A corridor leads to room after room, underground, numbered but abandoned, missing whatever they originally contained, but on a ledge there is a lone brightly coloured tin of caustic soda mottled with deep rust.

(Neasden Bunker, Brook Road, Dollis Hill, NW2 was open to the public on Saturday 17th September as part of the Open House London weekend. An amazing place. Shame Churchill didn't like it. Photos.)