LONDON — It’s a unique historical English property that could be perfect for a doomsday prepper. In fact, it was built to survive a nuclear blast.<\/p>\n
A Cold War era bunker is going up for auction later this month in the Bristol area in western England with a low starting bid of 20,000 pounds ($26,740).<\/p>\n
The entrance sits amid what looks like blackberry brambles on a hillside in the village of Hallen overlooking farm fields and the mouth of the River Severn. But don\u2019t expect a view from the underground chamber. <\/p>\n
The bunker is one of about 1,500 shelters built across the U.K. for the Royal Observer Corps, a civil defense organization, to safely monitor blast waves and fallout from nuclear attacks that never came.<\/p>\n
Most now sit empty, though they occasionally come up for resale since they were decommissioned and sold to the public in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
Last year, a bunker listed for a minimum of 15,000 pounds ($20,000) sold at auction for 48,000 pounds ($64,000) in Yorkshire Dales National Park in northern England. The buyers later submitted plans to turn it into a tourist attraction.<\/p>\n
From the outside, the relics are more eyesore than architectural wonder \u2014 just a couple steps and a block of concrete with a chain securing the entrance. On the inside, there\u2019s also not much to look at.<\/p>\n
The writers of the promotional materials had to dig deep to put some polish on the drab, cramped and isolated quarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeal for those with a unique taste for historical relics and rare investment opportunities,\u201d says the listing by David Plaister Ltd. Auctions.<\/p>\n
A floor plan shows Room One \u2014 the only room \u2014 and describes it as a \u201cdiscreetly integrated underground room, perfect as a private wine cellar, safe room, or secure utility area.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a spartan space of 128 square feet (11.8 square meters) with peeling paint, a stained floor, some shelving, a small desk-like surface against the wall, two plastic chairs and a single metal bed frame with no mattress.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a tiny hallway where a ladder descends from the hatch above and a tiny space marked as a water closet that photos reveal to contain a crude chemical toilet.<\/p>\n
The property last sold in 1995 for 95,000 pounds, but that included the land where the owner lives, said Sophie Thorne who is coordinating the Sept. 25 auction.<\/p>\n
The bunker is being divided from the larger property and will be sold separately. The owner, who is staying put, has never had to hunker down in the bunker.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just kind of part of the property that she bought,\u201d Thorne said. \u201cShe had no particular need for it, which is good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON — It’s a unique historical English property that could be perfect for a doomsday prepper. In fact,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[136873,3907,748,51,393,4179,4884,16,15,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-396223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-136873","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115143932009178017","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}