Regional Seats of Government or RSGs were the best known aspect of Britain's Civil Defence preparations against Nuclear War.

In the aftermath of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and the Russian acquisition of the Atom bomb, it was clear that London could not survive a nuclear bombardment.

It was now expected that Central Government might itself cease to exist, and control would pass entirely into the hands of a Regional Commissioner, of Cabinet rank, who would wield absolute power in his region. His staff would replicate all parts of Central Government.

Southport was such a reigon.....

Site Name: Southport - Duke's House SRHQ 10.1

Houghton Street
Southport
Lancashire

RSG site visit 3rd December 2001

SRHQ10.1 was located in the basement of Duke's House in Southport. The three storey office block was built in 1964 at the junction of Mornington Road and Houghton Street. The basement was purpose built as a Sub Regional HQ at this time. During its life it was always damp with leakage from the sewers of the offices above and it goes down in history as the worst constructed HQ in the UK; the drain problem was never solved in it's lifetime.

Duke's House was the same generation as Sovereign House, Hertford and Alencon Link, Basingstoke, one of the new purpose built SRHQ's. It was eventually abandoned following the 1980 Home Office Defence Review. The whole SRHQ system was then disbanded and the other proposed similar sites were never built. By then it was considered unwise to build HQ's in towns as although they might be easily accessible, they afforded little security and also made the town in which they were located a legitimate target as well.

The entrance to the basement is part way along the spine corridor running east-west in the ground floor of Duke's House where a nondescript wooden door parked 'Private' opens onto a stairway down to a short east-west corridor. Turning right at the bottom of the stairs, twin doors open into a vast rectangular room approximately 100' X 50' with concrete support pillars at regular intervals. All partition walls forming individual rooms and corridors have been removed leaving just one square room with solid walls in the middle.

Duke's House


There was originally an east-west spine corridor with four large rooms on the left. The first of these was allocated to GPO, Home Office and Central Office of Information. There were six rooms on the right hand side including make and female dormitories.

Back at the short entrance corridor, there are two rooms on the south side, the boiler room and meter room. The boiler is a recent replacement and is still used to heat the rest of the building. There is an emergency escape latter to the street from this room. The meter room is also still in use containing the main electrical input feed to the building. There is a rack of control boxes on one wall which dates from the 1960's. On the north side of the corridor the male and female toilets have been completely stripped out.

Floor Plan


 Key to floor plan

A = BBC Office                         G = Ventilation Plant Room
B = BBC Studio                        H = Meter Room
C = Mens Toilet                       I = Boiler Room
D = Female Toilet                    J = Emergency Exit
E = Kitchen                              K = GPO, COI & Home Office 
F = Canteen

A second set of double doors to the east opens into a second large room which would have been where the various agencies required in the SRHQ would have been located. There were five rooms on the right hand side, four of which still remain. There is no evidence to say what they were used for. 4 further rooms were located along the east end of the room but the partition walls have gone. The two rooms in the north east corner must have been the BBC Office and BBC Studio as there is evidence of acoustic tiles having been ripped from the walls and ceiling.

Along the west side of this large room are the canteen and kitchen. The canteen is completely empty with a serving hatch into the kitchen next door. The kitchen still retains a cooker and a tea urn and evidence of a now removed sink. At the far end of the kitchen a door leads into a small room with ventilation trunking. From this room it's possible to return to the short corridor through another narrow room. There is also a steel gas tight door into the small ventilation plant room. All the plant and control equipment remains intact but no longer in use. There are a number of unused filters in boxes. One of the control boxes refers to a generator although there is no evidence of where it was located.

The Agency Room


Back in the agency room there are again concrete supporting pillars at regular intervals and a second stairway up to the ground floor above. There is a safe in the small room under the stairs.

The size of the basement is somewhat larger than the building above so it obviously extends under the car park and perhaps under the street,

The SRHQ was known to have been damp and although now dry throughout (all the radiators were on) the western room still smelt damp. According to the caretaker, removal of the toilets and showers stopped the problem.

Since closure of the SRHQ the basement has been used by the Inland Revenue but is currently empty and available for rent. An archive storage company has shown an interest in taking it over.

Site Name: Southport - Sefton Metropolitan Borough Emergency Centre (Site 1)

SD336178
The Promenade
Southport

RSG site visit 3rd December 2001

The Sefton Metropolitan Borough Emergency Centre and was located in the basement of the Floral Hall, Southport from the early 1980's. The Floral Hall is on 'The Promenade' and the Emergency Centre consisted of 8 rooms on either side of a wide corridor used as one of the exits from the hall above.

The Floral Hall


It is unclear when exactly it was first used but was moved in the late 1980's to the basement of Southport Technical College where it was co-located with Merseyside County Standby. The conversion of the basement involved some internal wall changes and the fitting of new entrance doors.



The communications room with a PMBX switchboard and MSX was on the south side of the exit corridor with the control room on the north side. We were only able to see the control room which is now used for storage and left little evidence of its former use. There was a BT junction box with some wiring and soft wooden boards on the walls. The room was formed from two original basement rooms with a section of the dividing wall removed during the conversion.

The Former Control Room (Now Storage)

Site Name: Southport - Merseyside County Standby (Site 1) & Sefton Metropolitan Borough Emergencey Centre (Site 2)

SD342173
Mornington Road
Southport

RSG site visit 3rd December2001

During the 1980's Merseyside County Standby was located in the basement of the Southport College in Mornington Road. Towards the end of the decade it was co-located with Sefton Metropolitan Borough Emergency Centre when they vacated their previous premises at the Southport Floral Hall. Sefton's stay at the Technical College was short lived as in the late 1980's Southport Technical College became divorced from the Sefton MBC Education Department and the college wanted their accommodation returned.

It was therefore decided to relocate Merseyside County Standby to the Glenda Jackson Theatre in Birkenhead and to co-locate it with the Wirral Emergency Centre. Earlier, Sefton MB Emergency Centre was relocated to accommodation at Southport Town Hall where their new Emergency Centre opened early in 1991, BT Engineers having removed all their equipment from the Technical College basement on 28 November 1990. It still retains its TSX50 ECN unit at this new location.

When in use, the Merseyside standby at Southport would have been equipped with 1 10 + 50 PMBX switchboard, 6 private wires (to County Main, Sefton, St. Helens and Knowsley EC's, RGHQ at Duke's House and UKWMO), 7 Type 7 teleprinters, 4 Type 107A S + DX units, 2 5 line broadcast units, 2 Auto transmitters, WB1400 and two aerial feeder cables and roof mounted aerial for Raynet use.

Basement ramp


Two rooms were adapted and accessed down a ramp from the rear of the college. The ramp opens into a large room which was not part of the bunker, passing through this room a door opens into a narrow room that contains the remains of a floor standing equipment rack with an ROC cluster map of the UK on the wall. There is a film overlay over the map indicating its use in an exercise.

Former Control and communications room (Now Storage)


This room leads into the second larger room (6 metres X 4 metres). This is now used for storage but still contains 7 teleprinter tables with control units and internal power supplies. These are linked to the RGHQ in Duke House, UKWMO, County Main and one each to Knowsley, St. Helens and Sefton Emergency Centres. There are three other tables, one containing siren controls and another two for the broadcast units with the control panels remaining in place. There is another ROC cluster map on the wall with a film overlay. The ten tables and maps are due to be moved to the Hack Green museum in 2002 leaving no remaining evidence of the basements former use.

back in the early 80s we attended a fire in "Site Name: Southport - Duke's House SRHQ 10.1" basement, when we got back to the station we discovered we had left some equipment at the fire, when we went back to collect it they denied any knowledge of the basement complex or that there had been a fire. .............Top secret eh?

 ......did you get the equipment back...or did they deny all knowlage about that aswell............

nope we didn't get it back, HQ told us to forget it and write it off.

That's the entrance to the Cella! It used to be our 'common room' when I was at Southport Tech 69 - 71.