100 Places You Will Never Visit (12 page)

The Royal Mint was established as early as AD 886, and by the 16th century was the sole producer of coinage in the realm. By that time, its home had long been at the Tower of London. One of the Bank’s most famous Masters was Sir Isaac Newton, who held the post from 1699–1727 and did a great deal to combat the counterfeiting of coins that was rife at the time.

In 1809, the Mint relocated to new premises at East Smithfield in London, where there was far more room to accommodate the large, state-of-the-art mechanical coin presses then being introduced. However, by the 1960s even this location was becoming inadequate. With decimalization scheduled to come into force in 1971, it was decided that a new site would have to be found to cope with producing the mass of new coins and notes due to come into circulation. Areas in the northeast of England and near Glasgow in Scotland were rejected in favor of the green, green grass of Llantrisant, tucked into a corner of the Rhondda Valley. Some have rather unkindly described it as “the hole with a Mint”—a play on the famous advertising slogan for Polo mints: “the mint with a hole.”

Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Mint’s new home at Llantrisant in 1968. The last coin to be minted in London was produced in 1975, and all the Mint’s operations have been in Wales since 1980. Llantrisant is also home to the Mint’s museum of more than 70,000 coins, which although not open to the public, actively participates in putting on displays elsewhere.

Covering around 12 hectares (30 acres), the Llantrisant site employs more than 750 people and cost £8.5 million to build. Its buildings are clad in panels of lightweight concrete that sit on brick podiums. The site is surrounded by perimeter fencing and there is a permanent deployment of armed Ministry of Defence Police. You could try crossing their palms with silver, but in a place already full of coinage, don’t rely on it making much impact.

39 Guardian Telephone Exchange

LOCATION Subterranean Manchester, Lancashire, England

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Manchester

SECRECY OVERVIEW Access restricted: a long-secret communications network beneath the city streets.

Originally constructed in the 1950s during the Cold War, this complex of underground tunnels was designed with a view to safeguarding communications in the event of a nuclear strike. It mirrored similar enterprises undertaken in other major British cities such as London and Birmingham. Today the tunnels house a vast network of telephone cabling, though rumors about the Exchange’s exact status continue.

The tunnels that housed the Exchange are thought to cover around 3 kilometers (1.8 miles), stretching from Manchester’s city center to the Ardwick and Salford areas. The complex was built in 1954 by a workforce consisting largely of Polish immigrants. It was said to be able to withstand an atom bomb blast equivalent to that which befell Hiroshima, and in its heyday was reputedly staffed constantly, equipped with its own water supplies, food and emergency generators capable of sustaining a small workforce for several weeks.

Constructed at a depth of 35 meters (115 ft), the tunnels are about 2 meters (80 in) in diameter. The main entrance was purported to be on George Street, beneath a huge concrete slab designed to offer blast protection. The enterprise cost somewhere in the region of £4 million (partly funded by NATO partners) and included such luxuries as a recreation room for staff, complete with pool table and piano. The Exchange’s existence was only acknowledged in 1968, and it was subsequently abandoned by its troglodyte population in the 1970s, when it was then given over to telecommunications cabling.

In 2004, an electrical fire broke out during refurbishment of the tunnels, knocking out some 130,000 telephone lines in the northwest of England. A few conspiracy theorists barked that this was somehow evidence of a government-inspired information blackout, though most regard such a notion as fanciful. A year later, theft of equipment from the tunnels sparked a full-scale terror alert (the breakin followed shortly after the 2005 terrorist attacks on London).

While there is little to suggest that the tunnels are used today for anything other than running cables, official information regarding the network’s extent and access points remains sketchy. This lack of transparency has led some to suspect that the complex could be reactivated if required. Others, however, hold that it is nothing more than a Cold War relic, unsuitable for human access on health and safety grounds.

40 Government Communications Headquarters

LOCATION Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Cheltenham

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: home of the branch of the British intelligence service known as GCHQ.

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) facility, operating under the remit of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee, is responsible for providing the British government and armed forces with intelligence by monitoring and intercepting communications throughout the world. It is housed at a highly secure complex known as “the Doughnut.”

GCHQ can trace its roots to 1919, when the Government Code and Cipher School (GCCS) was established as a code-breaking body. During the Second World War, GCCS was based at Bletchley Park near London, where it was involved in the crucial and highly secretive effort to break the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers, developing some of the first automated computers in the process. Details of this work only emerged into the public domain decades later. In 1946, the organization was renamed as GCHQ and relocated to Eastcote in London until 1951, when it moved to a split site (Oakley and Benhall) at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

GCHQ faced twin challenges in the 1990s. Firstly, the end of the Cold War brought into question its very reason for being. Secondly, the internet posed new technological challenges. However, the “War on Terror” ushered in by the attacks of September 11, 2001, gave it a new purpose, and GCHQ staff now exert as much energy monitoring emails and chat rooms or surveying the output of websites as they ever did on intercepting phone calls and postal mail.

To cope in this new era, GCHQ moved into custom-built premises at Benhall in 2003. The circular, steel-reinforced building—which cost £337 million to build—soon garnered the affectionate nickname of “the Doughnut.” However, that may make it sound like a much more inviting place than it actually is.

Within its walls, a staff of 5,500 is focused on identifying and monitoring potential threats to national security. Specific details of the work undertaken are highly classified, with members of staff not even permitted to divulge their surnames. Attempted visits by members of the public are not well received (a boundary fence is regularly patrolled and kept under constant surveillance) and external telephone calls are not normally connected unless the caller has a specific name or extension number to offer the operator. In other words, they have far more ability to monitor you than you do to monitor them.

1 LISTENING POST GCHQ’s satellite ground station at Bude on the north coast of Cornwall in southwestern England is littered with radar dishes and domes. The base, on the site of the Second World War airfield RAF Cleave, is alleged to be part of the ECHELON signals intelligence network.

2 HOME SWEET HOME GCHQ’s move into “the Doughnut” in 2003 consolidated staff from some 50 smaller offices spread across Cheltenham. The new complex is constructed from concrete, glass, steel and Cotswold stone and incorporates an underground road for the secure delivery of sensitive materials.

41 Defence Science and Technology Laboratory

Porton Down

LOCATION Porton Down, Wiltshire, England

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Salisbury, Wiltshire

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: home of a controversial government biological and chemical research center.

One of Britain’s most secretive research sites, the laboratory at Porton Down, has been a focus of chemical and biological warfare research for almost a century. It has been accused of carrying out unauthorized experiments on servicemen, leading to an unspecified number of fatalities and claims of long-term serious medical conditions among veterans.

The First World War was the first to see widescale use of gas as an offensive weapon. Work on Britain’s chemical weapons capability began in a few scattered huts on the downs close to the quiet Wiltshire village of Porton in March 1916. Initially known as the War Department Experimental Ground, the center has undergone numerous name changes over its life, and since 2001 has been called the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), Porton Down. It is ultimately answerable to the Ministry of Defence.

From the outset, the Porton Down establishment relied on volunteers from the armed services for assistance in its research. In its earliest days, the facility was principally engaged in work on chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas. While much of the early focus was on developing these offensive weapons, since the 1950s the laboratory claims to have been engaged only in research to establish the hazards of chemical warfare, in order to develop suitable defensive strategies.

However, Porton Down’s post-Second World War testing program was to culminate decades later in legal arguments over alleged unethical practices: in short, the laboratory was accused of recklessly endangering British servicemen by exposing them to highly dangerous chemical agents without their full knowledge.

Perhaps the single most infamous case concerned the death of Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison on May 6, 1953. Maddison, just 20 years old, had a nerve agent, Sarin, dripped onto his skin and died as a result. Maddison had been led to believe that he was taking part in an experiment to find a cure for the common cold (volunteers reportedly received a £2 fee and three days of extra leave) but a closed inquest held shortly after his death returned a verdict of “misadventure.” It was only in 2004, following a lengthy campaign by members of his family, that the inquest was reopened, this time returning a verdict of unlawful death.

Many others told similar stories of having unknown substances dripped on their arms until their skin blistered or reddened, at which point ointments were applied. Others have spoken of being herded into gas chambers. A common thread is that volunteers were not made aware of the specific risks to which they were being exposed. Many have subsequently discovered that their service records show no evidence of their ever having even been at Porton Down.

Other disturbing cases include volunteers being given the hallucinogen LSD during the 1950s, causing long-running mental problems for some. In the following decade, a vehicle left the facility and drove through local villages to the outskirts of Bristol, depositing zinc cadmium sulfide into the atmosphere as it went. It was part of an experiment to see how a germ cloud might spread, but while the scientists involved were equipped with protective suits and gas masks, the local population had no such precautions. Authorities would later insist the release represented “no danger to public health.”

PERFECT CHEMISTRY Troops modeling the latest in chemical warfare suits and hardware at Porton Down in 1988. While questions about historic conduct at the facility linger, few doubt that it has played a crucial role in protecting British forces serving in disparate theaters of war over the years.

The suspicion that Porton Down has regularly used unknowing human guinea pigs for experimentation has proved difficult to shift. In 1999, Bruce George, Chairman of the House of Commons Defence Committee, admitted the facility’s operations were “… too big for us to know… there are many things happening there that I’m not even certain Ministers are fully aware of, let alone Parliamentarians.” Yet In the period 1916–2008, more than 25,000 servicemen are thought to have undergone tests at the facility. In 2008, the Ministry of Defence paid £3 million in compensation to a group of 369 who had brought a joint action against the government, claiming that tests carried out over a period of several decades had left them with permanent health problems. Their allegations included claims of exposure to mustard gas, nerve gas and tear gas.

The Porton Down site has a footprint of 2,800 hectares (7,000 acres) and is among the most highly secure in the Ministry of Defence’s portfolio. In an age when the threat of terrorists using biological or chemical agents has never been greater, it is unlikely that the DSTL will open its doors to closer scrutiny in the near future.

1 CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Porton Down is one of a select group of institutions operating facilities with the maximum biosafety rating of 4. Researchers work at sealed, air-filtered cabinets, inserting their arms into specially fitted gloves to avoid contact with harmful elements.

42 RAF Menwith Hill

LOCATION North Yorkshire, England

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Harrogate

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: a US-run base purported to be part of the ECHELON surveillance system.

RAF Menwith Hill is a base belonging to the UK Ministry of Defence, but made available to the US Department of Defense, who are responsible for many elements of its running. As part of America’s global defense communications network, Menwith’s stated mission is to provide intelligence support for the United States, UK and their allied interests. However, some question the extent of its powers.

Built on land owned by the British War Office, RAF Menwith Hill became operational in 1960, at which time it was known as Menwith Hill Station. The nearest town is Harrogate, a well-to-do spa town whose genteel air is about as far from an atmosphere of international subterfuge as you could hope to get.

From the beginning, however, Menwith Hill was staffed by US military personnel under the remit of the US Army Security Agency. In 1966, the US National Security Agency (NSA) took over administration. Today, the base primarily serves as an NSA field station, with US staff working alongside employees of the Ministry of Defence and GCHQ.

Menwith Hill has always been at the technological cutting edge, and in its early days was used to monitor communications coming out of the Soviet bloc. It was also an early adopter of IBM computer technology. Today, the site is home to large numbers of multi-faceted radar domes or “radomes” (there are currently more than 30), crucial to the ability of the US and UK to intercept and monitor communications. The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)—established in 1961 and based in Virginia, with responsibility for building and running spy satellites—also has a permanent presence on site.