TWENTIETH CENTURY DEFENCE SITES of TYNE and WEAR

Section 4 The Cold War
included the surface-to-air missile
“Bloodhound” and the air-to-air missile
“Firestreak”. This was the era of Mutally
Assured Destruction – the threat of a Soviet
attack on the west was to be deterred by the
threat of nuclear retaliation. By the 1970s
new structures which could withstand
nuclear, chemical or biological attack were
required because Western policy now
agreed that any Soviet threat would be met
in kind. The best known structures of this
period are the cruise missile shelters at
Greenham Common, which are now
protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument
(Cocroft 2003, 40-42).
23 Kenton Bunker (HER 5035)
The bunker remained in use into the Cold
War, when it was designated as a Regional
War Room. This meant that, in the event of a
major conventional or even nuclear attack,
the bunker would be used as a base from
which to control civil defence in the region,
and would maintain communications
between regional and national government.
However, the increasing proliferation of
atomic weapons by the mid 1950s changed
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Battery room
official thinking about future conflicts. It now
seemed that, in the event of nuclear war with
the Soviet Union, central government could
disintegrate altogether. Therefore, a new
command structure was created, centred
around autonomous Regional Seats of
Government, which would exercise complete
control over their regions in the event of a
major attack. Many Regional War Rooms
were upgraded to become Seats of
Government, but seemingly not Kenton Bar,
as it appears to have been too small to
accommodate all the extra staff necessary.
However, the Regional War Rooms were not
finally disbanded until 1968, and many
artefacts have been found in the bunker
dating from the late 1960s, including
batteries dated as being serviced in 1968.
This implies that Kenton Bar remained in use
in some role even after Regional Seats of
Government were established, although the
exact date of closure of the bunker is unclear
(Mabbitt 2003 and 2004).