This is a location which has been covered extensively on 28DL, so I won’t dwell too much on the history, as indeed many others have done so previously. However, there haven’t been new photographs for a long time owing to the site being sealed, so I thought it would be nice to revisit.
Dodge Hill is one of three air raid shelters in Stockport, dug into the sandstone below St Mary’s Church in Heaton Norris during the Second World War. Completed between 1938 and 1939, the shelters provided safe haven for an estimated 6000 people. The Dodge Hill and Brinksway shelters were sealed, opened and resealed many times since then, and the largest shelter under Chestergate has since been opened as a museum. Dodge Hill is located directly above the Tiviot Dale railway tunnel, so I do wonder if this is the only "double decker" urbex opportunity in the country?
Dodge Hill is almost literally on my doorstep, so it had become somewhere I had been especially keen to try and visit to in the months following my move to Stockport. Eventually, a tip-off very late one evening led to a very hurried trip down the road with just two torches and a phone, directly into a place that had almost become something of an obsession over the recent months. The following evening I returned with a tripod and some slightly better lighting to try and capture a place that I knew I might not get to visit a third time.
Although Dodge Hill is the smallest of the three shelters built in the area, it is quite easy to lose yourself inside, even equipped with the map drawn up by the Derbyshire Caving Club in 1975. As previous photo sets have shown, the original bunks are still in place, although many have been knocked over, which means you do need to climb over them in order to see everything. There are some signs of life from people who have called the shelter their temporary home in recent years, and there are a number of needles lying around in various places. Some of the original toilet blocks do remain, but the chemical toilets themselves have been strewn around the shelter, with one found a good distance away from the blocks.
Across two visits I believe I managed to cover the whole site, but was only able to locate one of the staircases to the original entrances - attempting to find the other led me to mass of concrete, implying it is lost to time.
Without further rambling, here is how Dodge Hill is looking in 2020:
I have been lurking on 28DL for over a decade, but this is my first trip that I have felt compelled to share - please do let me know if there is anything that should be changed. Thank you for reading!
Dodge Hill is one of three air raid shelters in Stockport, dug into the sandstone below St Mary’s Church in Heaton Norris during the Second World War. Completed between 1938 and 1939, the shelters provided safe haven for an estimated 6000 people. The Dodge Hill and Brinksway shelters were sealed, opened and resealed many times since then, and the largest shelter under Chestergate has since been opened as a museum. Dodge Hill is located directly above the Tiviot Dale railway tunnel, so I do wonder if this is the only "double decker" urbex opportunity in the country?
Dodge Hill is almost literally on my doorstep, so it had become somewhere I had been especially keen to try and visit to in the months following my move to Stockport. Eventually, a tip-off very late one evening led to a very hurried trip down the road with just two torches and a phone, directly into a place that had almost become something of an obsession over the recent months. The following evening I returned with a tripod and some slightly better lighting to try and capture a place that I knew I might not get to visit a third time.
Although Dodge Hill is the smallest of the three shelters built in the area, it is quite easy to lose yourself inside, even equipped with the map drawn up by the Derbyshire Caving Club in 1975. As previous photo sets have shown, the original bunks are still in place, although many have been knocked over, which means you do need to climb over them in order to see everything. There are some signs of life from people who have called the shelter their temporary home in recent years, and there are a number of needles lying around in various places. Some of the original toilet blocks do remain, but the chemical toilets themselves have been strewn around the shelter, with one found a good distance away from the blocks.
Across two visits I believe I managed to cover the whole site, but was only able to locate one of the staircases to the original entrances - attempting to find the other led me to mass of concrete, implying it is lost to time.
Without further rambling, here is how Dodge Hill is looking in 2020:
I have been lurking on 28DL for over a decade, but this is my first trip that I have felt compelled to share - please do let me know if there is anything that should be changed. Thank you for reading!
, i might go take a look and some pics, thank you for the write up 
