# Deepdene WW2 Southern Railway control bunker



## chinc (Jul 14, 2010)

During WW2 the then Southern Railway took over Deepdene House, near Dorking, Surrey. To the rear of the house were some natural caves; there were turned into a series of rooms (with multiple entrances) that formed an underground control centre.

The railway left the house in the 1960s, and the rather beautiful house was unfortunately demolished on 1969. There is now a really ugly modern office block on the site, the head quarters of Kuoni travel.

Some kids caused a fire just inside the tunnels in the mid-90s, and it's very dusty inside, and highly contaminated with blue and white asbestos. I used a half-face mask and disposable suit. Despite that there's some beer cans and a little grafitti inside.

For more details and a map of the rooms see.

There are plenty of remains including steps, dragon's teeth and even part of a car. For those and loads more photos see my gallery here.

Dragon's teeth







The switchboard.





















Strange widget with coils in it near the switchboard.






Lamp shade near the switchboard.






The main distribution frame (MDF)

















View down R2 to the ventilation equipment and emergency exit.






Ventilation equipment.






The emergency exit up a 60 foot shaft.






Some charred paneling.






View from R2 into R3 and the telephone exchange; note the ventilation ducting on the right wall and the door on the floor on the left






Battery terminals; Westinghouse is printed on the ceramic.






View from R14 into R9 and R13.






The control room 






Old style BS 546 plug socket






View into R3, entrance to R7 on right






Main fusebox.






Light switch.






Looking from R13 into R10






Looking from R12 into R13. Panels on the floor seem to be asbestos.






Wooden panel that looks like it would have mounted coat hooks.






View from R7 into R3.






View down R14 from R10.






View from R7 into R8.






View from R2 to the MDF and switchboard.






Bulb socket in R8.


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## night crawler (Jul 14, 2010)

Hey that was good, sort of place Fluffy and Newage find. Any spiders, Fluffy loves spiders. Good report my man. 
Shame about the boneheads who got in there to play with fire even more they did not burn themselves


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## Winch It In (Jul 14, 2010)

Absolutely cracking first report , especially like the spiral staircase.
Well Done,
BTW Welcome to the forum..


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## fluffy5518 (Jul 14, 2010)

night crawler said:


> Hey that was good, sort of place Fluffy and Newage find. Any spiders, Fluffy loves spiders. Good report my man.
> Shame about the boneheads who got in there to play with fire even more they did not burn themselves



Believe me Fluffy and Newage would love to put this on our done list (Spiders or not !!) Nice one,and, as Mr Crawler quite rightly states a crackin first report with top notch photo's.Many thanx.


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## outkast (Jul 15, 2010)

Cracking first report mate and nice pics too, very interesting place

Thanks for posting.

Dave


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## chinc (Jul 29, 2010)

Hi all,

Thanks for all of the welcomes and comments about the photo, I'm glad that you enjoyed. Finding it was a pain and took many hours  



night crawler said:


> Hey that was good, sort of place Fluffy and Newage find. Any spiders, Fluffy loves spiders. Good report my man.



I didn't see any spiders, but there was a really surprising number of flies in there... quite disconcerting to be underground in the nice quiet and suddenly have something buzz past your head.



> Shame about the boneheads who got in there to play with fire even more they did not burn themselves



I really couldn't agree more, that mindless vandalism makes me absolutely mad.


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## hydealfred (Jul 31, 2010)

Excellent report and superb photography - many thanks


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## Foxylady (Jul 31, 2010)

hydealfred said:


> Excellent report and superb photography - many thanks



Echo that. Great spiral staircase.


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## chinc (Aug 1, 2010)

Foxylady said:


> Echo that. Great spiral staircase.



Thank you  Here's a few more photos of the staircase, in case you hadn't already seen them in the gallery:

From the emergency exit, at the top:











From the bottom:





















I tried climbing up the stairs, but only made it about half way up. My exploring partner got to the top however, and said that it was pretty good overall, apart from one step being broken.

I didn't like it because we were dressed up in fairly restrictive protective clothing (see below), they were a little rusty, me not liking heights, and having £1500 of photography equipment around my neck, which had a tendency to get more banged around than I'd prefer.

We were dressed up with a P3 respirator and disposable suit due to the huge quantities of asbestos:






I


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## BigRon (Sep 6, 2010)

*Strange Coils*

Look like selenium rectifier modules from the power supply/backup battery charger for the switchboard. 4 of them implies a bridge rectifier.

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium_rectifier[/ame]


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## hydealfred (Sep 6, 2010)

Thanks BR always nice to have some technical info and explanations.


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## tom83 (Sep 6, 2010)

That place is awesome. great find, belting pictures


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