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Hidden in the slopes below Solcum Aylesbury hillfort are a remarkable network of Second World War tunnels. These tunnels are laid out in a grid pattern and extend over three miles in length. They are the largest surviving part of a wartime complex which was built in 1941 as a “shadow factory” for Birmingham’s Rover works. The purpose of such “shadow factories” was to provide secure manufacturing facilities for aero engines, this would be used in the event of cataclysmic enemy bombing of industrial targets or even in the event of invasion.
The tunnels were the focus and the manufacturing centre of a far larger complex of workshops, accommodation and administration buildings. Few surface remains of this larger complex remain, although the nearby Kingsford Pub is a large wartime building. The tunnels themselves were used as machine shops and storage by the Rover works. The main entrance to the site was in the south where ancillary buildings and ventilation shafts clustered around the tunnel mouths. This entrance area was built beneath the site of the cave houses and the old “Swiss Village” both of which were retained (possibly to confused aerial observation). Other tunnel entrances on the north side of the site gave entrance to Kingsford Lane but these appear to have been of secondary importance. Apart from the extreme southern edge of the site Drakelow remained largely untouched by its wartime use.
The tunnels were impressively large and many were wide enough to accommodate vehicles as well as the machinery used in manufacturing. Other areas housed offices and store facilities. Fortunately, the bombing of cities was never complete enough to disrupt manufacture and the underground complex was never really put into full production. Towards the end of the war the site was used more and more for storage although engines were still manufactured and stored here up until c 1955.
The tunnels had been built at vast expense but had (arguably) not been needed for their intended wartime role. By the 1950s however the Cold War presented government planners with a completely new use for the vast tunnel system and after 1958 the underground complex was converted to a Regional Seat of Government (RSG). This was part of Britain’s elaborate civil defence system, which was intended to administer the country in the event of an attack (either conventional or nuclear).
The RSG would accommodate key local and national government personnel as well as members of the armed forces and limited medical staff. The full extent of the earlier tunnel system was not used and the RSG utilised the northern part of the tunnels. A communication mast on the summit of Solcum Aylesbury linked the RSG to the rest of the Civil Defence network.
By 1980 changes in civil defence policy dictated that the old RSG was too large and a new shelter was created in a small part of the northern tunnels. This period also saw the demolition of most of the surface buildings (which had been semi abandoned since the 1940s). It also saw extensive refurbishment of the RSG parts of which still survive. By the early 1990s the end of the Cold War had rendered the site redundant and the tunnels along with the rest of the site were disposed of to a private buyer.
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