"It's a small world..."

[phylo_roadking]

All my life I've been plagued by what me dad called SmallWorld-itis - a strange and annoying complaint/malady/curse where things seem to happen around me Connections seem to cluster around me. I can think for the first time in decades of someone I went to school with - and he/she will be the first person to walk round the next corner!

As some of you may have gathered, I live in Northern Ireland....which magnifies the problem; a postage stamp-sized part of the United Kingdom, there are times it seems everyone is connected in some way with everyone's else's business! Or at least ACT as if they are!

Recently, this has even extended into my personal interests and reading habits! It has turned into a "historical" thing! Sometimes it has been annoying, sometimes very enlightening....and here's a World War Two example that arose just tonight as a result of a thread on AHF...

This was first posted in answer to something...

and the Alternative Government Bunker at Box Tunnel on the Great Western mainline, in an old limestone underground quarry, where whole express trains could idappear into the tunnel entrance from London and not come out.

....to which I was able to answer...

In time of emergency, the alternative "National Seat Of Government" was first PADDOCK at Dollis Hill, in the grounds of the GPO establishment there...at the back of the carpark behind the three-storey office building where Tommy Flowers later built Colossus Churchill HATED the place with a passion - "Bloody Neasden!" - and only visited the place once IIRC, to chair a Cabinet meeting one afternoon held there to test the facilities. On the night of the Coventry Raid - when it was still thought that the raid was aimed at London - he came under considerable pressure to re-locate from the Cabinet War Rooms to PADDOCK but refused; instead he spend time of the ROOF of the building with John Colville. That's where he was when he got the news that the bombing beams were swinging north away from the capital towards the Midlands...

The tunnel at Box was for a long time one of the three main candidates - identified by Peter Laurie and Duncan Campbell - for the outside-London NSG. It's location withing shouting distance of RAF Box made it a very good candidate. But the real NSG was actually in the limestone caves at Corsham very close by - and the establishment remained there with SOME very limited updating until the early 1990s!....

Corsham was LATER in the war more famous for being - one of Bristol Aviation's "shadow" factories, and Bristol radial aero engines were assembled in an underground factory in part of the cave complex! The NSG was actually entered via a nondescript steel door ot the rear of the Bristol factory's canteen!

Ain't it truly a small world??? Coventry - PADDOCK - Colossus - Corsham - Bristol Aviation!

But that's not the END of the mysterious connections!

[phylo_roadking]

There's actually ONE more incredible connection to this story that got MY attention. YEARS after WWII, the company that held the remains of Bristol's holdings leased the aero engine factory there to a rapidly-shrinking British motorcycle company in 1967...well, they were ALL shrinking then!...ROYAL ENFIELD! The quite stupendous Series I and Series II Interceptors, all that was left of the Enfield range by then, were assembled there...




EDIT - this is a Series I Interceptor...very trad Enfield Twin engine...


It's not mentioned in Hennessey - but the Enfield deal would have been VERY useful at maintaining the cover of Corsham as a run-down industrial site! And Enfield still needed a canteen too...

For full details on Corsham, it's history, its (lack of) facilities and its anticipated role as the National Seat Of Government - see Peter Hennessy's The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War


Is there anyone else who is starting to come across intertwining history connections to people and places like this nowadays, as our knowledge of all this is greatly expanded, and made more readily accessible by the Internet???

[Owen]

Sorry, I thought this thread was going to be about that really annoying Disney ride.

YouTube - '64 Disneyland Goes to the World's Fair (It's A Small World)

[Rich Payne]

Enfield's connection with underground production in Wiltshire actually goes back to the war years.

This is a page from 'Made Like a Gun' the post war book detailing their production achievements.



Was it the same site as the post-war motorcycle production ?

That the factory was in Wiltshire resulted in large quantities of spares being bought up by L&D Motorcycles in Bristol who were one of the best sources for many years until the proprietor retired.

[phylo_roadking]

Was it the same site as the post-war motorcycle production ?

Rich, I don't think so. Anywhere I've ever read it mentions that the move from Redditch in 1967 was into an underground ex-aero engine factory at Corsham That can only be the old Bristol facilities....unless there was someone ELSE there too???

It would of course make sense that when looking around in 1966-67 they eyed up somewhere the company was already generally familiar with - road/rail links for workers, distribution etc.

[von Poop]

Thanks for that little article Rich.
The Underground production/assembly at Corsham and elsewhere fascinates me.
Thread here:
Rudloe Manor Jeep assembly & remanufacturing. (& Corsham's Underground buildings in general.)

[Rich Payne]

Enfield were making Ack-Ack predictors there so maybe they were on a similar site.

I have met old boys down that way who have talked about it but not understood much more than "Oo aar, onderground fact'ries... Enfield... tunnels, aar moi luvver" or somesuch.

[phylo_roadking]

It's the scrumpy - rots the brain!

[Rich Payne]

Just Googled this :-

Westwood Quarry

They seem to have been alongside Shorts at Westwood.

Rough cider doesn't rot my brain but it does make my legs go wobbly !

[phylo_roadking]

The Enfield section used for the motorbikes was one of the 'Shadow' factories protecting vital war efforts from bombing. Short Brothers, Rover and Enfield were the three main underground factories. They are known to us now as Shorts, Drakelowe, and Enfield. Enfield was still in use until the beginning of the 90's

??? I wonder who by - it certainly wasn't the company "Enfield"

P.S. I wonder if any rider of a WD/CO would have regarded it as a product of a "vital" war effort....!