- Foxwarren Bunker, near Cobham, Surrey will be sold on April 18
A forgotten World War Two shelter with suggested links to the Dambusters Raid is set to go on auction for £165,000.
Foxwarren Bunker, near Cobham, Surrey, will be sold along with 2.1 acres of commuter belt woodland, but without current planning permission for the site.
It is the first ever air raid shelter to be sold by Michael Mercer of auctioneers Strettons, who is representing the lot, and goes under the hammer on April 18.
The subterranean bunker was built into the bank of the forest and is suggested to be one of the most significant passages in British military history.
It became linked to a network of depots known as the Foxwarren Experimental Department, a secret wartime project that produced prototypes for new planes and weapons.
One of the people working at the base would be Dambusters inventor Barnes Wallis, who spent time developing the release mechanism for his bouncing bomb in a nearby hanger.
The bombs were used by the 617 Dambusters Squadron to destroy critical infrastructure in Germany in a surprise attack in 1943, which dealt a vital blow to Hitler’s industrial machine during the Second World War.
Foxwarren Bunker (pictured) will be sold along with 2.1 acres of commuter belt woodland
The H-shaped bunker has a foreboding entrance and reinforced concrete walls
The subterranean bunker was built into the bank of the forest and is suggested to be one of the most significant passages in British military history
Today, the bunker has been a source of interest for amateur explorers, with a number of visits to the site documented on YouTube and websites dedicated to derelict underground finds.
The site failed to find a buyer last year when it was put up for sale at £300,000, but Mr Mercer says the company has seen ‘keen interest’ in this plot after it recently sold an adjacent parcel of land.
He told the Evening Standard: ‘We don’t exactly get wartime bunkers offered to us every month. It’s definitely an unusual one.
‘It’s hard to put a value on something like this, but that’s the good thing about an auction.’
During the Second World War, the bunker believed to have served the nearby motor racing circuit and aerodrome called Brooklands – a site which was turned over to the production of military aircraft.
The site failed to find a buyer last year when it was put up for sale at £300,000, but the auctioneers says they have seen ‘keen interest’ in this plot
The structure of the tunnels would have been built within an excavated site and then covered with the backfill material, known as a cut and cover technique
The site became linked to a network of depots known as the Foxwarren Experimental Department, a secret wartime project that produced prototypes for new planes and weapons
The H-shaped bunker has a foreboding entrance and reinforced concrete walls, which are a departure from the corrugated iron sheets typical of traditional air raid shelters.
There is a vertical escape shaft at the far end, but this is now inaccessible thanks to a broken ladder and large tree root.
The structure of the tunnels would have been built within an excavated site and then covered with the backfill material, known as a cut and cover technique.
