paddock | far from the light of day
12|08|03

We emerged in a central spine corridor which ran parallel with the road above it.

The stairs we walked down were the main stairs, being situated in the centre of the bunker. The spine corridor swept from the left-to-right in front of us.

“Floor 28” was rather confusing - we weren’t 27 storeys down, nor were there originally 27 levels above ground. The Post Office numbered the floors of all the buildings on the site incrementally - so floors 1-8 could’ve been in the majestic 1930s block, floors 9-15 could’ve been in the industrial block, with other floors being scattered around the site.

This was a post-war numbering scheme. And as the sign points to the stairs, either the floor below was 28, or it was the floor above.

During planning, the bunker was referred to as CWR2 (Cabinet War Room 2, with CWR1 being in Whitehall) or the Emergency War Headquarters. It was Churchill who used an another alternative name, Paddock, possibly named after the paddock which the bunker was built under.