Burlington - Corsham - 2014
I never really wanted to do a report on Burlington. It’s been covered in exquisite detail on here scores of times by many a fine derpographer, most notably Speeds 9 part epic which was one of the first I think I saw from Spring Quarry about 4 years ago. I remember being utterly infected by the language being used by the people who had been smug enough to pen a report on what is essentially the UKs premier Bond hideout, science fiction, Cold War Classic secret underground base, as to all the people who'd seen it first hand, it was basically a once impossible dream come true.
That period of very British but wasteful and quite frankly insane secret government projects will never be repeated in the same way, and its a bit of a shame that the explorers of the future won’t really get to experience the Cold War majesty of places like the Kingsway exchange, Pyestock or Burlington aside from maybe a day trip to a place like Kelvingdon Hatch museum.
There is something uniquely alluring about these places, possibly the secrecy, the relatively recent (but not too recent) history attached to them and a childhood of watching Sean Connery and Roger Moore skulk about places that looked just liked them, dispensing with henchmen and saving the world.
Burlington’s early history probably doesn’t need much going over. We all know it was a quarry that got MOD’ed in the second world war and later became, for a short time at least, the planned go-to evac point for the government if nuclear war ever befell the United Kingdom. Of course, the Russians found out about it in due course and pointed a few missiles at it, rendering it a borderline useless missile decoy site until it was declassified in the early 2000s. Where the queen and Davy Cameron would end up now if the bombs started to fall is anyones guess, but you can be damned sure its a damn sight deeper than the measly 30m of Spring Quarry.
Explorers have been sneaking into this place for a very long time I’m sure, but its only been with the advent of the internet and the rise of the ‘scene’ that these excursions have been made accessible to the general public. Back in 2010, a few brave souls thought it’d be a good idea to get to work on a wall next to a nondescript red door in a disused and publicly accessible stone mine just north of Hunt’s Wood in the village of Westwells. Upon finding they had made it into the abandoned BAC aircraft factory a short stroll found them in front of the perimeter wall of the famed nuclear bunker. They figured they might as well keep going, and ferreted their way in.
Now, you can guess what happened next. They told their mates, and they told their mates, and they told their mates, and before you knew it, a door had been ripped off, the hole had been plugged, and everyone was back to square one except with the addition of motion sensors behind the wall. This, dear reader, is basically the story of Burlington in our context. If you ever find yourself in Corsham, go for a walk round a few of the vent shafts. Every single last one of them has been an unwilling participant in the smash it, go in, tell your mates, ‘got it sealed/alarmed’ post pictures cycle.
I’d heard it be open so many times only to be told two days later it had been sealed that I sort of lost interest with it, especially as its so damn far away. Don’t get me wrong, I was up for seeing it on my own terms, and I’d always go for a stroll round whenever I was down for a Wiltshire meet, but I wasn’t really up for putting in 250 miles and baiting out round a live MOD base with a gas axe and set of bolties at 3am to see it. Just seemed, well, a bit daft.
Strangely, there were many people who did exactly this, and I’ve heard a few tales of some loon cracking steel doors with a plasma cutter and 10 other people dropping everything like lifeboat patrol men and leaving straight for Corsham at a moments notice. These stories were always months old by the time I heard them though, and the Wiltshire lot, probably scarred by that placehacking write up and the subsequent beefing up of Corsham security pretty much shut their traps to the outside world. If you wanted Burly, you either had to make some friends or do some work.
So.. not long before Katie escaped to the east, I’d offered to give her a lift down to a party in Browns. We had an evening before mucking about on some cranes in London and had a look at a couple of old favourites before heading to Wiltshire for my seasonal poke around the grounds of MOD Corsham. In what was one of the last sunny days of 2014, I finally hit a breakthrough. One of the last things on my list of things to check, only it didn’t quite work out on the first go. I’d managed to get myself into a position 30m underground in which I could basically see burly though a 2 inch gap, with no hope of squeezing through. I tried everything, stuck in a confined space trying and trying for what must have been 2 hours before we gave up a left for the party. I mentioned what I’d been up to to a few people there, hoping maybe someone else would have some bright ideas but I left Wiltshire empty handed and in a bit of a mood. I had a weeks travelling to do pretty much straight after, but we agreed we’d tackle it a fortnight later. In the adjourning weeks I had a few new ideas, and also got Morse in on the case as he’d been my partner in crime for a good number of those Wiltshire walk rounds (even climbing into that derpy farm house by the north west shaft into West Lung with me looking for a secret trapdoor in the basement) and we tried again, only this time we got the goods without so much as a spanner. 100% non-destructive access to Burlington, something I am actually rather proud of, especially considering the abuse the place has had over the years.
The bunker itself has seen a bit of work since you might have last seen it. It’s DAMP, the little buggies have gone, the fluro-tube lamps have all been taken out and there is mould all over the shop, but most of the cool old shit remains. I’m not going to get tooooo forensic on you, but some of you might been keen to see how the old girl looks now:
Mouldy….
Phone exchange
The phone exchange is doing quite well, although its getting a tad mouldy. They’ll probably end up skipping it tbh.
The old quarry graff is still there..
Odds and sods still all over the show
The museum is still as was.
As is the kitchen
And the lamson station and BBC studio
Although the map room is cleared out now.
Underground lake
Door to Spring
Our biggest fan..
Most of the lifts are fucked
PA system is still intact
But all the buggies are gone
except this sorry looking couple
We didn’t try the connection to Tunnel, would have probably set the bells off (this is where I expect Rigsby to pop up and tell me we could have just walked through..)
So yeah, there you have it.
Like I said before, I didn’t really see the need to write a report due to it being done before many times over but I’d like to think that this might serve as a prompt to anyone thinking they’ve ‘missed the boat’ or that it’s impossible not be put off by anything. I fell victim to this, trying to find previously trodden paths and turning up nothing, when all it took was a bit of imagination.
Oh, don't get too giddy though.
Naturally, we told our mates, and they told their mates, and they told their mates, someone broke something and now its sealed.
But don’t let that put you off, yeah?
I never really wanted to do a report on Burlington. It’s been covered in exquisite detail on here scores of times by many a fine derpographer, most notably Speeds 9 part epic which was one of the first I think I saw from Spring Quarry about 4 years ago. I remember being utterly infected by the language being used by the people who had been smug enough to pen a report on what is essentially the UKs premier Bond hideout, science fiction, Cold War Classic secret underground base, as to all the people who'd seen it first hand, it was basically a once impossible dream come true.
That period of very British but wasteful and quite frankly insane secret government projects will never be repeated in the same way, and its a bit of a shame that the explorers of the future won’t really get to experience the Cold War majesty of places like the Kingsway exchange, Pyestock or Burlington aside from maybe a day trip to a place like Kelvingdon Hatch museum.
There is something uniquely alluring about these places, possibly the secrecy, the relatively recent (but not too recent) history attached to them and a childhood of watching Sean Connery and Roger Moore skulk about places that looked just liked them, dispensing with henchmen and saving the world.
Burlington’s early history probably doesn’t need much going over. We all know it was a quarry that got MOD’ed in the second world war and later became, for a short time at least, the planned go-to evac point for the government if nuclear war ever befell the United Kingdom. Of course, the Russians found out about it in due course and pointed a few missiles at it, rendering it a borderline useless missile decoy site until it was declassified in the early 2000s. Where the queen and Davy Cameron would end up now if the bombs started to fall is anyones guess, but you can be damned sure its a damn sight deeper than the measly 30m of Spring Quarry.
Explorers have been sneaking into this place for a very long time I’m sure, but its only been with the advent of the internet and the rise of the ‘scene’ that these excursions have been made accessible to the general public. Back in 2010, a few brave souls thought it’d be a good idea to get to work on a wall next to a nondescript red door in a disused and publicly accessible stone mine just north of Hunt’s Wood in the village of Westwells. Upon finding they had made it into the abandoned BAC aircraft factory a short stroll found them in front of the perimeter wall of the famed nuclear bunker. They figured they might as well keep going, and ferreted their way in.
Now, you can guess what happened next. They told their mates, and they told their mates, and they told their mates, and before you knew it, a door had been ripped off, the hole had been plugged, and everyone was back to square one except with the addition of motion sensors behind the wall. This, dear reader, is basically the story of Burlington in our context. If you ever find yourself in Corsham, go for a walk round a few of the vent shafts. Every single last one of them has been an unwilling participant in the smash it, go in, tell your mates, ‘got it sealed/alarmed’ post pictures cycle.
I’d heard it be open so many times only to be told two days later it had been sealed that I sort of lost interest with it, especially as its so damn far away. Don’t get me wrong, I was up for seeing it on my own terms, and I’d always go for a stroll round whenever I was down for a Wiltshire meet, but I wasn’t really up for putting in 250 miles and baiting out round a live MOD base with a gas axe and set of bolties at 3am to see it. Just seemed, well, a bit daft.
Strangely, there were many people who did exactly this, and I’ve heard a few tales of some loon cracking steel doors with a plasma cutter and 10 other people dropping everything like lifeboat patrol men and leaving straight for Corsham at a moments notice. These stories were always months old by the time I heard them though, and the Wiltshire lot, probably scarred by that placehacking write up and the subsequent beefing up of Corsham security pretty much shut their traps to the outside world. If you wanted Burly, you either had to make some friends or do some work.
So.. not long before Katie escaped to the east, I’d offered to give her a lift down to a party in Browns. We had an evening before mucking about on some cranes in London and had a look at a couple of old favourites before heading to Wiltshire for my seasonal poke around the grounds of MOD Corsham. In what was one of the last sunny days of 2014, I finally hit a breakthrough. One of the last things on my list of things to check, only it didn’t quite work out on the first go. I’d managed to get myself into a position 30m underground in which I could basically see burly though a 2 inch gap, with no hope of squeezing through. I tried everything, stuck in a confined space trying and trying for what must have been 2 hours before we gave up a left for the party. I mentioned what I’d been up to to a few people there, hoping maybe someone else would have some bright ideas but I left Wiltshire empty handed and in a bit of a mood. I had a weeks travelling to do pretty much straight after, but we agreed we’d tackle it a fortnight later. In the adjourning weeks I had a few new ideas, and also got Morse in on the case as he’d been my partner in crime for a good number of those Wiltshire walk rounds (even climbing into that derpy farm house by the north west shaft into West Lung with me looking for a secret trapdoor in the basement) and we tried again, only this time we got the goods without so much as a spanner. 100% non-destructive access to Burlington, something I am actually rather proud of, especially considering the abuse the place has had over the years.
The bunker itself has seen a bit of work since you might have last seen it. It’s DAMP, the little buggies have gone, the fluro-tube lamps have all been taken out and there is mould all over the shop, but most of the cool old shit remains. I’m not going to get tooooo forensic on you, but some of you might been keen to see how the old girl looks now:
Phone exchange
The phone exchange is doing quite well, although its getting a tad mouldy. They’ll probably end up skipping it tbh.
The old quarry graff is still there..
Odds and sods still all over the show
The museum is still as was.
As is the kitchen
And the lamson station and BBC studio
Although the map room is cleared out now.
Underground lake
Door to Spring
Our biggest fan..
Most of the lifts are fucked
PA system is still intact
But all the buggies are gone
except this sorry looking couple
We didn’t try the connection to Tunnel, would have probably set the bells off (this is where I expect Rigsby to pop up and tell me we could have just walked through..)
So yeah, there you have it.
Like I said before, I didn’t really see the need to write a report due to it being done before many times over but I’d like to think that this might serve as a prompt to anyone thinking they’ve ‘missed the boat’ or that it’s impossible not be put off by anything. I fell victim to this, trying to find previously trodden paths and turning up nothing, when all it took was a bit of imagination.
Oh, don't get too giddy though.
Naturally, we told our mates, and they told their mates, and they told their mates, someone broke something and now its sealed.
But don’t let that put you off, yeah?
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:! Cracking photos as ever and liking your write up 
