HMS Forward/ WW2 Naval Bunker
This site was effectively a Maritime intelligence Centre & Naval command headquarters 60 feet below ground. It was kept pretty secret even up until 1993 both the imperial war museum and the MOD denied its existence.
If you entered room 16 of the Guinness trust holiday home in November 1941 you would be heading down the stairs to an 'impenetrable fortress' and home to the most sophisticated and contemporary communications devices.
Forward was equipped with two telephone exchanges, its own W/T office with 11 radios, a VF line telegraph terminal, 10 teleprinters and 2 typpex machines, today this sort of technology is in your pocket but back then it was huge!
Looking after all the equipment was paramount there where two pillboxes up top which where access from the bunker and an underground machine gun post which pointed straight up the east entrance stairs and if the Germans made it past that there was a large pit at the bottom of the stairs too!
Once the war was over HMS Forward was decommissioned on 31st August 1945.