LONDON — In the early 1940s, as WWII was raging and defensive gun batteries were sprouting up and down the English coast to keep German ships at bay, Winston Churchill commissioned a sprawling underground shelter to house soldiers stationed in the area.
Fan Bay Deep Shelter, which was carved out of the iconic chalk cliffs at Dover, housed four officers and up to 185 men during aerial bombardments in five bomb-proof chambers.
The shelter, which Churchill personally inspected in June 1941, was decommissioned in the 1950s and filled in during the 1970s. Over the past two years fifty volunteers for the National Trust have been restoring it. It opened to the public on Monday.
One of the highlights among its windy, gloomy passageways is the graffiti left by former occupants. One patch of wall has a particularly useful ditty for anyone needing the toilet: "If you come into this hall, use the paper not this wall. If no paper can be found, then run your arse along the ground."