Report - WW2 Buildings Near Durham Prison 10/5/07

[xm657]

Hope somebody has an idea what these are. Came across them by accident and appears to be an extensive compound of concrete buildings with very think concrete blast shields around them. Slight comedy access as I spotted them from the main road and just drove onto the site without much regard for whether I was supposed to be in there, I parking up behind one of the buildings. Anyway it was all deserted so had a look round and took some photos. Eventually decided to leave and just as I get to the main road there is some guy closing and locking big 6 foot high metal gates, he saw me coming and assumed I must be meant to be in there so opened them and let me out, gave him a wave of thanks. If I'd spent literally a minute longer in there I'd of been stranded, lucky! Presumably I'd just turned up at the precise time the land owner had opened the gates and innocently sneaked in behind him.

Here's the flashearth link - its quite an extensive site, but what was it?

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And heres some photos I took.

 

[jondish]

Re: WW2 Buildings Near Durham Prison REPORT 10/5/07

I enquired with Alan Turnbull about this site six months ago - here's his reply:

At first I was confused by your enquiry re: Durham as there are two prisons, one, HMP Durham, in the city centre near the cathedral and the other is HMP Frankland at Brasside further north - a category "A" facility which is on the Sensitive Sites Register.

The depot just north of Frankland prison, near Finchale Abbey, is a very old WW2 War Ministry munitions storage dump using concrete bunkers.

It's laid out in the classic ordnance depot pattern and you can see the main train line running past to the west. Before the prison was built, the depot would have been connected into this line with a spur. Indeed, the land on which the prison was built would already have been owned by the Govt as it would have been all bought up during WW2.

There's not much info out there as it's no longer active, but try typing "brasside" and "munitions" into Google.

Here's a very interesting local map with the depot marked near Finchale Abbey:-

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In fact, look at this other page:-

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and note the Royal Naval depot marked near Urlay Nook close to Durham Tees Valley Airport. I mention this location at the end of SB1 in the section on police training bases.

Regards,

Alan Turnbull
www.secret-bases.co.uk