Sometimes, a bit of damp stinky hole is just what you need after a long hard week, so off up the Wenallt we went!
wait, no! Not that kind of hole, you dirty bastard you!
I meant a good old-fashioned, family friendly, disused Cold War bunker 😜
It's both completely trashed and has been done to death on here, but I fancied having a nosey anyway to see if there was anything interesting left and maybe try shooting some old Polaroids in the pitch dark.
This one's mostly shot on 35mm, with a smattering of very expired Polaroids, so I hope you enjoy the photos!
anyways, let's get into it shall we
--
But first, a not-so-brief history.
I couldn't actually find a satisfyingly complete history for this AAOR, but here's what I've managed to piece together from across the interwebs
The Wenallt Anti Aircraft Operations Room (or AAOR) was constructed in the early 1950s to serve as an air defence command centre for the Cardiff Gun Defended Area (or GDA).
Built as a partially underground, two-storey concrete bunker across from the Wenallt forest, it would have overseen and commanded radar sites, gun emplacements, and other defences across Cardiff, Penarth and Barry.
It didn't remain in operation for long though.
With air defence tech rapidly improving throughout the 50s, the various AAORs and the entire Anti Aircraft Command were declared obsolete, closing down in 1956.
The site was handed over to the General Post Office (later BT) for use as a hardened telephone exchange, as they already had some exchange equipment in place there.
This would likely have been for emergency communications in case the Soviets decided to nuke Cardiff - it was the Cold War after all!
The GPO partially refitted the AAOR in the late 60s-early 70s to become the main War HQ for Wales, but this work was cancelled before completion and the site left disused, likely due to the construction of the adjacent microwave radio site seen here in this BT Heritage photo from 1965.
4x5 too, lush!
Today, the AAOR is heavily vandalised and fire-damaged, with signs of scrappers everywhere and most of the entrances bricked up.
It's also become a top destination for local teens and firebugs apparently, as we discovered while we were there!
--
I visited along with my wife towards the end of August 2026, on a somewhat dreary day.
It wasn't supposed to rain according to the forecast, but very conveniently it waited until we'd just stepped off the bus at the bottom of the hill to start drizzling.
Lovely stuff!
So, after a long, wet and steep walk up the hill, albeit with some very nice views of Cardiff behind us, we arrived beneath the huge radio tower next to the site.
This radio tower has quite a cool shape, looks a bit like a rocket to me.
Very 60s, and looks sweet as hell on this old-ass Polaroid film!
It doesn't seem to have many antennas left on it at this point either, so maybe someone braver than I could climb it without toooo much fear of getting BBQd.
Not for me, thanks.
After bashing a bit further through the undergrowth, we caught our first glimpse of the AAOR buildings themselves.
We had a quick nosey inside this side building, but there wasn't much to be seen apart from leaves and ivy.
It did have a cool view of the bunker itself through the window though!
We continued on around the overgrown perimeter of the bunker, keeping our eyes out for any potential ways in.
What looked like a way in turned out to be one of the original entrances, complete with a set of rusty peely blast doors! Very nice!
Unfortunately, these had long been welded shut, and the room beside them was completely empty. Nuts.
You can see the grain of the wooden forms used to pour the concrete walls though, which is kinda neat!
There's another former entrance as well a bit further round, but this one had long been bricked up, albeit with a small gap in the top.
also this view of the place looks very Brutalist, with those boxy vents on the walls.
We continued wandering around the outside inspecting the potential ways in, when suddenly, a voice echoed from inside!
"You looking for a way in? Hold on, I'll come show you!"
It turned out that this disembodied voice belonged to a very nice lad who was also exploring the place, and had heard us talking bollocks outside.
He very kindly came out to show us the entrance he'd used, which was much appreciated
However, as I was just pulling my legs inside, a group of much younger lads showed up and followed us inside as well.
Now, if any of you have watched Hell On Earth going into caves and playing silly buggers with each other, these boys were exactly like that, except barely old enough to know what a pube is.
Amusingly, they were genuinely shocked to see that we weren't kids like they were!
"Oh come in, this gir, uh, WOMAN says there's a ladder!"
They were shouting all kinds of bullshit and trying to scare one another with ghost stories throughout our entire time there too, yknow, typical teenage shenanigans
"did you know some homeless guy got murdered in here, there's still blood! Look!"
while pointing at some spilled hydraulic oil on the floor.
yeah that was me, sorry lads 😅
Anyway, once we'd navigated ourselves down the somewhat sketchy ladder, we found ourselves inside.
and what a delicious hell hole it is!
Soot from the fires and peely paint coats every surface, and somehow swallows all 2000 lumens of your torch.
You'll probably notice that my 35mm photos suddenly get grainy as fuck, and that's because some plonker decided to only bring 100-speed film. Oops.
But hey, at least my stupid powerful flash works!
In here you can see the other side of those blast doors from earlier too, along with some very Walking Dead-esque graffiti.
We continued from here into the generator room, which still had a few goodies despite being mostly stripped - like this lovely control panel!
Someone should really report the state of this to Mr. Dunk, because he's clearly been slacking!
Here's a peelyroid of that too, showing a tad more
That panel is for the generator set housed in the same room, which has been thoroughly stripped of any copper by the local scrap fairies.
My photo of this ended up blurry, so instead I'm nicking one from my Mrs, shot on some crusty old Kodak Advantix camera found up her folks' loft.
You've heard of APS-C, now get ready for APS-H!
Grain-tastic!
I gotta say though, 16:9 aspect ratio on film just ain't right!
Curse you Kodak and your schemes for selling less film for more money!
Moving on from there, we wandered around the gutted lower floor, occasionally spotting some interesting gubbins amidst the omnipresent ming.
for example, these labels which would have been used on the manual telephone switchboard! Neato!
Or, this old fire extinguisher sat rusting away!
or even, this very mouldy chair in the corner of what would have been the central Plotting Room.
That photo genuinely looks like something from a horror film, I dig it!
I didn't even notice the 'HELP' graff until I peeled that shot and had a look!
After going round in circles a few times on the lower floor, we found the least damaged stairwell and headed on upstairs.
The first room we came to up there formerly housed racks of telecoms equipment, which now lay knocked over on the floor.
I was quite interested in all of this, being a telecoms engineer by trade!
My educated guess is that this rack housed equipment to create the dial tone and ringing signal on telephone lines.
Here's a closer look at one of the line cards from that
also, a backup battery gubbin on the other downed rack
While we were in this room, one of the boys who'd followed us in appeared in the doorway.
He'd lost his mates, and decided to come and hang about with us until they reappeared. The poor sod looked really scared, so we kept him entertained by telling him about the history of the place.
After a few minutes though, his friends reappeared, and he joined them off on their merry way.
Most other rooms upstairs were completely gutted, but one had these former shelf rails which I thought were neat.
Gotta love a bit of hand written labelling!
The next room though had perhaps my favourite shot of the whole thing.
I mean, look at this!
I entered, and nothing bad happened.
Not quite sure what the fuss is all about!
Next, the viewing gallery.
This would have been used to observe the goings-on down in the main plotting room.
My old Automatic 250 really hated this photo for some reason.
I think the flash bounced off the metal ducting and fooled the meter, oops!
I would blame autofocus for this being out of focus, but my camera has none of that modern nonsense...
That's the Mark 1 Eyeball baybee, not helped by my torch deciding to flake out.
Finally, with all of my gear staging a revolt, we found another plant room - this time for ventilation.
It STUNK of smoke in here, and there were reasonably fresh embers smouldering in the metal ducting.
I really don't get it, surely there's more fun to be had drinking cider and smoking ganj in the local park??
After snapping this, we quickly made our way back out having seen most of everything inside.
Our torches were running flat, my T70 was acting weird, and we'd had more than enough of breathing whatever as-yet undiscovered fungal spores that were breeding down there.
We re-emerged into the daylight, just as the sun was beginning to set.
The dappled sunlight through the trees lit up that side building from earlier really nicely, so I grabbed one final shot.
Lovely stuff!
Now, all we had to do was get back down that sodding hill!
My poor knees were FUBAR the next day because of that hill and the somewhat convoluted entrance, stiff as a board and sounding like a bag of nails.
But hey, I'm informed that that's all part of the fun!
Once again, I hope you've enjoyed reading my overly verbose nonsense, even if it's about an absolute hellhole that nobody should really visit at this point...
For the photo nerds, all the 35mm photos in this were shot on Kodak Pro Image 100 with my Canon T70 and FD 28-55 plastic fantastic lens.
The Polaroids meanwhile were on some peel-apart ID-UV film that expired in 2008, shot with my Polaroid Automatic 250 and lit using old M3 flash bulbs!
I've got several much nicer places on the list too, so you'll probably see me again fairly soonish!
but until then, have a good evening!
(or whatever other time you read this!)
wait, no! Not that kind of hole, you dirty bastard you!
I meant a good old-fashioned, family friendly, disused Cold War bunker 😜
It's both completely trashed and has been done to death on here, but I fancied having a nosey anyway to see if there was anything interesting left and maybe try shooting some old Polaroids in the pitch dark.
This one's mostly shot on 35mm, with a smattering of very expired Polaroids, so I hope you enjoy the photos!
anyways, let's get into it shall we
--
But first, a not-so-brief history.
I couldn't actually find a satisfyingly complete history for this AAOR, but here's what I've managed to piece together from across the interwebs
The Wenallt Anti Aircraft Operations Room (or AAOR) was constructed in the early 1950s to serve as an air defence command centre for the Cardiff Gun Defended Area (or GDA).
Built as a partially underground, two-storey concrete bunker across from the Wenallt forest, it would have overseen and commanded radar sites, gun emplacements, and other defences across Cardiff, Penarth and Barry.
It didn't remain in operation for long though.
With air defence tech rapidly improving throughout the 50s, the various AAORs and the entire Anti Aircraft Command were declared obsolete, closing down in 1956.
The site was handed over to the General Post Office (later BT) for use as a hardened telephone exchange, as they already had some exchange equipment in place there.
This would likely have been for emergency communications in case the Soviets decided to nuke Cardiff - it was the Cold War after all!
The GPO partially refitted the AAOR in the late 60s-early 70s to become the main War HQ for Wales, but this work was cancelled before completion and the site left disused, likely due to the construction of the adjacent microwave radio site seen here in this BT Heritage photo from 1965.
4x5 too, lush!
Today, the AAOR is heavily vandalised and fire-damaged, with signs of scrappers everywhere and most of the entrances bricked up.
It's also become a top destination for local teens and firebugs apparently, as we discovered while we were there!
--
I visited along with my wife towards the end of August 2026, on a somewhat dreary day.
It wasn't supposed to rain according to the forecast, but very conveniently it waited until we'd just stepped off the bus at the bottom of the hill to start drizzling.
Lovely stuff!
So, after a long, wet and steep walk up the hill, albeit with some very nice views of Cardiff behind us, we arrived beneath the huge radio tower next to the site.
This radio tower has quite a cool shape, looks a bit like a rocket to me.
Very 60s, and looks sweet as hell on this old-ass Polaroid film!
It doesn't seem to have many antennas left on it at this point either, so maybe someone braver than I could climb it without toooo much fear of getting BBQd.
Not for me, thanks.
After bashing a bit further through the undergrowth, we caught our first glimpse of the AAOR buildings themselves.
We had a quick nosey inside this side building, but there wasn't much to be seen apart from leaves and ivy.
It did have a cool view of the bunker itself through the window though!
We continued on around the overgrown perimeter of the bunker, keeping our eyes out for any potential ways in.
What looked like a way in turned out to be one of the original entrances, complete with a set of rusty peely blast doors! Very nice!
Unfortunately, these had long been welded shut, and the room beside them was completely empty. Nuts.
You can see the grain of the wooden forms used to pour the concrete walls though, which is kinda neat!
There's another former entrance as well a bit further round, but this one had long been bricked up, albeit with a small gap in the top.
also this view of the place looks very Brutalist, with those boxy vents on the walls.
We continued wandering around the outside inspecting the potential ways in, when suddenly, a voice echoed from inside!
"You looking for a way in? Hold on, I'll come show you!"
It turned out that this disembodied voice belonged to a very nice lad who was also exploring the place, and had heard us talking bollocks outside.
He very kindly came out to show us the entrance he'd used, which was much appreciated
However, as I was just pulling my legs inside, a group of much younger lads showed up and followed us inside as well.
Now, if any of you have watched Hell On Earth going into caves and playing silly buggers with each other, these boys were exactly like that, except barely old enough to know what a pube is.
Amusingly, they were genuinely shocked to see that we weren't kids like they were!
"Oh come in, this gir, uh, WOMAN says there's a ladder!"
They were shouting all kinds of bullshit and trying to scare one another with ghost stories throughout our entire time there too, yknow, typical teenage shenanigans
"did you know some homeless guy got murdered in here, there's still blood! Look!"
while pointing at some spilled hydraulic oil on the floor.
yeah that was me, sorry lads 😅
Anyway, once we'd navigated ourselves down the somewhat sketchy ladder, we found ourselves inside.
and what a delicious hell hole it is!
Soot from the fires and peely paint coats every surface, and somehow swallows all 2000 lumens of your torch.
You'll probably notice that my 35mm photos suddenly get grainy as fuck, and that's because some plonker decided to only bring 100-speed film. Oops.
But hey, at least my stupid powerful flash works!
In here you can see the other side of those blast doors from earlier too, along with some very Walking Dead-esque graffiti.
We continued from here into the generator room, which still had a few goodies despite being mostly stripped - like this lovely control panel!
Someone should really report the state of this to Mr. Dunk, because he's clearly been slacking!
Here's a peelyroid of that too, showing a tad more
That panel is for the generator set housed in the same room, which has been thoroughly stripped of any copper by the local scrap fairies.
My photo of this ended up blurry, so instead I'm nicking one from my Mrs, shot on some crusty old Kodak Advantix camera found up her folks' loft.
You've heard of APS-C, now get ready for APS-H!
Grain-tastic!
I gotta say though, 16:9 aspect ratio on film just ain't right!
Curse you Kodak and your schemes for selling less film for more money!
Moving on from there, we wandered around the gutted lower floor, occasionally spotting some interesting gubbins amidst the omnipresent ming.
for example, these labels which would have been used on the manual telephone switchboard! Neato!
Or, this old fire extinguisher sat rusting away!
or even, this very mouldy chair in the corner of what would have been the central Plotting Room.
That photo genuinely looks like something from a horror film, I dig it!
I didn't even notice the 'HELP' graff until I peeled that shot and had a look!
After going round in circles a few times on the lower floor, we found the least damaged stairwell and headed on upstairs.
The first room we came to up there formerly housed racks of telecoms equipment, which now lay knocked over on the floor.
I was quite interested in all of this, being a telecoms engineer by trade!
My educated guess is that this rack housed equipment to create the dial tone and ringing signal on telephone lines.
Here's a closer look at one of the line cards from that
also, a backup battery gubbin on the other downed rack
While we were in this room, one of the boys who'd followed us in appeared in the doorway.
He'd lost his mates, and decided to come and hang about with us until they reappeared. The poor sod looked really scared, so we kept him entertained by telling him about the history of the place.
After a few minutes though, his friends reappeared, and he joined them off on their merry way.
Most other rooms upstairs were completely gutted, but one had these former shelf rails which I thought were neat.
Gotta love a bit of hand written labelling!
The next room though had perhaps my favourite shot of the whole thing.
I mean, look at this!
I entered, and nothing bad happened.
Not quite sure what the fuss is all about!
Next, the viewing gallery.
This would have been used to observe the goings-on down in the main plotting room.
My old Automatic 250 really hated this photo for some reason.
I think the flash bounced off the metal ducting and fooled the meter, oops!
I would blame autofocus for this being out of focus, but my camera has none of that modern nonsense...
That's the Mark 1 Eyeball baybee, not helped by my torch deciding to flake out.
Finally, with all of my gear staging a revolt, we found another plant room - this time for ventilation.
It STUNK of smoke in here, and there were reasonably fresh embers smouldering in the metal ducting.
I really don't get it, surely there's more fun to be had drinking cider and smoking ganj in the local park??
After snapping this, we quickly made our way back out having seen most of everything inside.
Our torches were running flat, my T70 was acting weird, and we'd had more than enough of breathing whatever as-yet undiscovered fungal spores that were breeding down there.
We re-emerged into the daylight, just as the sun was beginning to set.
The dappled sunlight through the trees lit up that side building from earlier really nicely, so I grabbed one final shot.
Lovely stuff!
Now, all we had to do was get back down that sodding hill!
My poor knees were FUBAR the next day because of that hill and the somewhat convoluted entrance, stiff as a board and sounding like a bag of nails.
But hey, I'm informed that that's all part of the fun!
Once again, I hope you've enjoyed reading my overly verbose nonsense, even if it's about an absolute hellhole that nobody should really visit at this point...
For the photo nerds, all the 35mm photos in this were shot on Kodak Pro Image 100 with my Canon T70 and FD 28-55 plastic fantastic lens.
The Polaroids meanwhile were on some peel-apart ID-UV film that expired in 2008, shot with my Polaroid Automatic 250 and lit using old M3 flash bulbs!
I've got several much nicer places on the list too, so you'll probably see me again fairly soonish!
but until then, have a good evening!
(or whatever other time you read this!)
