Life under ground at Brandsby

David Jenkinson
BBC York & North Yorkshire contributor

In case of a nuclear attack the posts would have been manned for 21 days

"A what?!" exclaimed my long suffering wife, Dawn.

"A Monitoring Post, darling," I said, through pursed lips, bracing myself for impact.

"What on Earth is a Monitoring Post?" she asked, looking to heaven as if to say what now?

Bless her she puts up with a lot. Ever since she has known me I have been deeply interested in the Second World War. What with the 1944 Jeep and more uniforms and militaria than I could ever know what to do with, it is little wonder someone once remarked that I have more uniforms than Action Man!

"And what do you intend to do with it?" she enquired.

"Restore it?" said I.

And so it began, I now had the former Royal Observer Corps Monitoring Post at Brandsby, just north of York.

It started whilst surfing the net looking at Nick Catford's excellent Subterreanea Britannica website when I came across his record of the remaining ROC Monitoring Posts.

I have to admit I had never heard of the ROC so I was instantly fascinated. So followed several hours looking through Nick's catalogue of over a thousand remaining Posts. Then the idea struck, find one and restore it. But where to begin?

I toured several posts in the area but found them all to be too far gone to even consider a restoration. Then there was the operational equipment. Where, if indeed any was still surviving, would that come from?

My research led me to what they call 'York's Cold War Bunker' the former 20 Group Headquarters at Shelley House, Acomb. That was the decider. I wanted my monitoring post to be the nearest to the only restored Royal Observer Corps HQ in the country. If only I could find one.

The underground post needed a lot of work to restore it

Brandsby

Back in January of 2009, I decided to go and have a peek at Brandsby. The surface structures were exactly as pictured on Nick's site. Paint peeling, louvres rotting and soil long since removed.

Fate somehow said this is the one. When the landowner drew up in his car I greeted him with a handshake and asked if he objected to me having a peek inside.

"Not a problem", said Mark, "But you'll be lucky to get in, it's seized up."

Boy, was he right! The latch was absolutely solid. The 'T' bar would not shift it. The hatch was stuck shut. In hindsight this proved to have worked in my favour. If I could not get in then neither would anyone have before me. In fact the only person to have got in before was Nick Catford in 2000! So a bit of judicious tweaking and teasing was employed and the latch was nudged round.

Inside was amazing. No equipment but a plethora of paperwork. The Post itself was as dry as a bone with not a drop of moisture in the sump. The place looked as if it had been abandoned the day before.

The next hour and a half flew by. I poured over the paperwork. Letters, orders, ROC magazines to list but a few. This was it. This was the post I had to restore. Then that question again; Where to begin?

The Monitoring Posts were nearly all built to a standard design

First I wanted to make sure no-one else got in. Cheeky, I know, but I popped the two miles to Easingwold and bought two padlocks. Once on the hatch clasps I was a little more relaxed.

The landowner, Mark, proved to be fantastic. He and his family were more than willing to come to an arrangement about the post and support a restoration, even to the point that when I asked if he minded me putting an earth covering back on he said "Leave it to me, I've got fifty tonnes you can have." That went on at the beginning of May.

Following an interview on BBC Radio York and an article in The Press, I was inundated with information. Over the following weeks I managed to acquire virtually all of the operational equipment. Sadly most of it proved harder to find than I imagined so it did not come cheap.

And the future..?

We've had a few open days which have proven popular with people continually being amazed by the Post's role. Next year we intend to have even more and hopefully expand the site at Brandsby to incorporate an aircraft observation post.