Churchill War Rooms

Churchill War Rooms, London - darkometer rating : 4 - The underground bunker rooms in Whitehall, London , which served as the secret headquarters for Winston Churchill and his war cabinet from where they "oversaw" Britain 's war effort during WWII . Added to this there is also a separate Churchill Museum about the big man's life and times in general. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: The construction of the Cabinet War Rooms in London was actually already begun shortly before WWII , so they became operational just in time, on 27 August 1939, just a few days before the outbreak of the war with Germany 's invasion of Poland . Initially it was just a secret basement complex underneath the Treasury building, not a bunker. So when Great Britain became a target for German aerial bombing raids too, these basement rooms were not yet bombproof in any way. To rectify this, a steel-reinforced concrete "slab" was put on top of the rooms in December 1940, right during the "Blitz". This extra bunker fortification would have withstood bombs of up to 500 lbs, so it would still not have been good enough to survive a direct hit with anything bigger than that (a V1 or V2 , say). However, the rooms were never hit at all and survived the war unscathed. The war cabinet consisted of the Prime Minister, i.e. from 10 May 1940 Winston Churchill, and a small selected number of ministers from both the Conservatives and the Labour Party.