BT Apprentices and ITP members, get to know former secret history of BT. In July we got the opportunity to visit the formerly secret Kingsway Tunnels. The event was part of Knowing BT and also the ITP Insight series run by Adam Oliver and John Clarke. BT Apprentices have always been able to take part in Knowing BT events, the ITP Insight series has been created by Adam in his new role seconded to the ITP as their CEO. This enables other people across their 4k+ members to experience what we have over the past six years of Knowing BT visits. For those of you who don’t know about the tunnels they were constructed to house the communication hub for telephony traffic in and out of London. The tunnels original purpose was to be an air raid shelter, however this never actually happened and it was used for Stroweger telephony equipment and also by MI5. Over 200 employees worked in the tunnels and they had a number of facilities available, such as – a bar, cafeteria and sleeping quarters. The day was split up into two groups of around 30 people; there was a mix of Apprentices and ITP members. We were in the second group with a full 2 hour tour of the tunnels at 3pm. Inside of this visit we explored areas such as: The Stroweger Exchange, the room once occupied by MI5, the MDF (Main Distribution Frame) and the bar etc. For each tunnel there is another tunnel down below to carry all the cables. All this was built by hand and under top secret conditions, even calling them Kingsway Tunnels was a deliberate ploy to confuse people with the Kingsway Road Tunnel. Workers were deliberately foreign workers with poor English and brought through random connecting tunnels so that they had no idea where they were digging. For any of you that are interested the Kingsway Tunnels are currently for sale for around £5 million, but before you write that cheque consider that they cost over £300k a year to run. They would also cost around a billion pounds if you decided to fill them with concrete and then they would sink which would leave you liable for the buildings and Tube above. If you have any great ideas what to do with the Kingsway Tunnels then let me know. It was an incredible experience and one that so few people have ever done. If you want to relive the scenes of what it was like in its prime then check this Pathe News broadcast britishpathe/video/under-london-trunk-telephone https://theitp.org/ Written by Jade Holmes ADMIN TMW
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 14:38:11 +0000
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