Underground in Wiltshire - Monkton Farleigh by Brian P James (March/April 1998 issue of UFO Magazine] From the April 1998 issue of UFO Magazine: "RAF Rudloe Manor has been instrumental in acquiring UFO reports from all branches of Britain's armed services down the years. Many believe that some of the most sensitive cases were compartmentalised, and kept hidden from civil servants such as Nick Pope, who between 1991-1994, headed MoD's official UFO Desk (Secretariat Air Staff 2a) Considerable speculation has recently surfaced regarding a purported vast network of underground tunnels and secret corridors that are claimed to proliferate in and around this part of Wiltshire. Here, respected researcher Brian P James attempts to put things into context."
I have recently been reading articles and letters on the subject of RAF Rudloe Manor with some interest. While I am in no doubt as to the activities of UFO investigations within the Low Flying Complaints Unit, I am concerned at the possible false mythology being generated over claims of vats underground facilities at Rudloe and its connected bases. Perhaps we should go back and look at how many of the underground complexes in that part of Wiltshire came into being?
A few years ago I was part of a group that paid a visit to the former underground facility at Monkton Farleigh, some 5km southwest of Rudloe. The group was taken there by two of its members, both of whom were in the Territorial Army (TA), and who knew much of the history of the older MoD bases. On approaching the site along a narrow road by minibus, all we could see was a relatively unimpressive concrete bunker built into a shallow hill. However, on entering the bunker area, we were very surprised.
The Monkton Farleigh site was originally a limestone mine, but its history changed somewhat as a result of the needs of war. After its MoD use, it was at one stage moved into 'private hands', and was mooted for development to lease or sell private nuclear bunkers - this was at a time when the then Conservative government of the UK was guaranteeing us nuclear war and destruction! After this phase, the complex was taken over by a group who ran it as a museum and visitors centre (now closed).
Our guides took us down the main sloping access tunnel that it turn lead us to an underground entrance hall, some 30m underground. We had to go down still further tunnels to enter the main complex itself. Over the next hour and a half, we were treated to a fascinating trip of over 4km of tunnels and truly vast caverns, with all manner of machinery, rail tracks, conveyer systems and hoists between the various levels and the surface. These tunnels and caverns were used on many occasions by the BBC for location filming for their sci-fi series such as Dr Who and Blakes 7.
So what was the original MoD purpose for these vast tunnels and caverns? Very simple - they were used during WW2 as part of a huge network of linked complexes that formed the largest underground weapons storage area in the world - the constant temperature and humidity in the underground environment was ideal for munitions storage. There was no significant main entrance for a very good reason - secrecy! This low-profile made it impossible for German reconnaissance to ever deduce that such facilities existed (although on some occasions aerial ropeways were used to move munitions above ground). Even if the Germans had known of the whereabouts of such facilities, the depth underground would have rendered them safe from all conventional bombs at the time.
Another part of the visit took us to an old railhead in what used to be a timber yard (at least superficially), both on the surface some way distant from the entrance bunker. Within the rail building, there was a sloping adit that went down to the main underground complex, and this was served with conveyers to take munitions in and out of the base. This 'secret access' was but one of many similar buildings all around the district, many were in farm buildings. These access tunnels were spread out over an area of over 5km in radius. The secrecy of these bases was further enhanced by positioning them in rural locations, with no housing or barracks nearby. Workers were bussed in daily from Melksham, Trowbridge an Bradford-on-Avon, and as far afield as Bath and Chippenham. The claims made for workers being flown or bussed in and out of Groom lake/Area 51 show there is nothing new! I mentioned that we walked round over 4km of tunnels and caverns. However, we saw less than 10% of the original Monkton Farleigh complex! Think of it - over 40km of tunnels and caverns… To try to give readers a sense of scale and perspective - one tunnel, perhaps over 200m long, has about 10-12 large caverns off either side, and each cavern was around 40m deep, by 20m wide and 10m high. In the dim light, it was hard to really see the end of this tunnel, and it was more like something from a film set. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the layout of these caverns was far from ideal, since doors on either side of the tunnel faced each other, and any accident could have caused an explosion in the opposite cavern. How ere these tunnels and caverns constructed? The guides that took us round were unclear on juts how much of the complex was constructed after the outbreak of WW2. Its seems more than likely that much of the facility was already in place some years before war broke out - suggesting that Britain was not as unprepared for war as we might otherwise believe! Because of the vast scale of the complex, it is hard to conceive of working gangs, using what motorised drilling equipment was available in the 1930s, undertaking such a huge task. Blasting the rock with explosives seems unlikely in a munitions store.
The Monkton Farleigh complex was just one in a larger chain in that part of the west country. There was a smaller, but similar complex at Radstock in Somerset, some 17km further southwest, but supposedly connected by an underground railway to the Monkton Farleigh site. There were two other inter-connected complexes. One half as big again as Monkton Farleigh was Corsham, and this was directly linked to a smaller facility at Gastard. The Corsham and Gastard facilities would have had well over 100km of tunnels. And what modern-day military bases are positioned directly over this same area? RAF Rudloe Manor, Hawthron, and HMS Royal Arthur! I have no doubt that the current day underground bases in this area were developed from the truly vast underground munitions and storage facilities that have existed for over half a cnetury. Remember again, that even in the 1940s, these four linked complexes could have had over 200km of tunnels and caverns. Also, think of the connecting tunnels between the, and even perhaps across to the RAF base at Colerne.
How much of this construction would have been possible in such a short time after the outbreak of WW2, given the tunnelling technology available then? It is clear that the construction of these facilities was no short-term project.
Perhaps it is time to take the air of mystery out of these accounts of RAF Rudloe Manor's underground facilities, accounts not based on rumour and speculation, but on the fact that they have been under our feet for at least 50 years.
Some of the rumours regarding various underground rail systems stretching all the way to the heart of London, a distance of some 160km, should be considered more closely. Again, I ask how this vast network of tunnels was constructed before the days of tunnel-boring machines, as were used for the Channel Tunnel? The construction of all of these tunnels and complexes was not an easy, short-term task and it must have been in progress for many years before 1939, and the general public knew very little, if anything, about it. |
