The Cold War comes to Preston

When the Cold War started, a network of underground monitoring posts was established around the UK staffed by the Royal Observer Corps. There were 32 in our area (see map), with a cluster round Preston.

The headquarters was in Langley Lane in Goosnargh, which also served as one of the six Sector Operations Centres for the whole country ‘where scientists would forecast which areas would be in danger from nuclear fall-out.’

The Langley Lane site is now occupied by a veterinary practice, Oakhill Veterinary Group. I’ll post more on the site shortly.

The history of the monitoring posts has been told on a website, Subterranea Britannica, which contains the following:

‘With the start of the cold war and the increasing threat of nuclear attack in the 1950’s, the ROC was given the added responsibility of reporting nuclear bursts and monitoring fall-out which necessitated the construction of 1563 underground monitoring posts throughout Great Britain & Northern Ireland.

‘On the 15th June 1955 it was announced in the House of Commons that ‘steps are being taken for the ROC to give warning of and to measure radioactivity in the event of air attacks in a future war.’ At the time, this new duty was considered only secondary to the Corps’ primary function of aircraft identification.

‘The ROC was chosen for this new role as the infrastructure and lines of communication were already in place and the personnel involved were familiar with the use of monitoring equipment. Posts were clustered into 3’s and 4’s for communications purposes and it was envisaged that group HQ would pass the information received from each post to Sector Operations Centres where scientists would forecast which areas would be in danger from nuclear fall-out allowing civilian and military authorities to decide what services (ports, rail, airfields etc.) could remain operational.

‘To give fall-out protection, the new ‘monitoring rooms’ would be constructed underground, usually at the same location as the aircraft monitoring post which usually took the form of a pre-cast concrete (Orlit) or brick room often raised a few feet off the ground to aid visibility.’

The instruments used back in the 1950s do seem rather primitive today. They included:

‘… the Ground Zero Indicator (GZI) which consisted basically of a pinhole camera with four holes facing the cardinal compass points. A piece of photographic paper was placed in-front of each hole and in the event of a nuclear burst, the image of the fireball would be projected through one or more of the pin holes. From these, the bearings and elevation of the burst could be calculated.

‘The GZI was mounted on a convex metal plate, usually located on top of the vent shaft next to the entrance but it necessitated somebody emerging into the open air to retrieve the sheets of photographic paper!

‘All posts were also issued with hand operated ‘Secomak’ or ‘Carter’ sirens and maroons. The sirens were for sounding the ‘red’ warning (a rising and falling note) indicating an imminent air or missile attack and the ‘white’ warning (a steady note), indicating ‘all clear’. With the approach of radioactive fallout the ‘black’ warning was sounded by maroon with a series of three explosions at close set intervals.’

‘Most of the posts closed in 1968 reverted back to the original landowners while those closed in 1992 were put out to public tender. Nationally, many were snapped up by cellular telephone operators because of their strategic positions on high ground.’

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Source: https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/royal-observer-corps/