Kilrea’s secret Cold War bunker could soon be a home… with a wine cellar!

CGI of proposed new home at site of a former nuclear monitoring bunker in Kilrea

Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council has received plans for a new home and wine cellar at the site of a former nuclear monitoring bunker in Kilrea.

The planning application proposes the renovation and extension of the redundant Royal Observer Corps (ROC) monitoring bunker at Blackrock Road in the village.

According to the accompanying Design and Access Statement, the upper ground floor of the planned dwelling will accommodate two bedrooms, a shower room, and a utility area, while the lower ground floor will house a kitchen, dining, and living room.

Sectional view of the underground Cold War-era bunker in Kilrea

The external aspects of the existing bunker

A larder off the kitchen will double as a connecting corridor to the bunker, which will “remain untouched” and be used as a wine cellar.

The statement described the bunker, located 3.73 metres below a field along Blackrock Road, as a “little known relic of the Cold War,” constructed to monitor and report the effects of nuclear explosions and the resulting radioactive fallout.

“Mainly civilian spare-time volunteers manned the bunkers, but as ROC activity was subject to the Official Secrets Act, it is a seldom-told part of our social history, and for the most part, the general public are unaware of their existence,” the statement added.

The Kilrea ROC Post was opened in 1962, one of 59 bunkers built across Northern Ireland, and was decommissioned in 1991 following the end of the Cold War.

The proposed design of the new home at the site of a former Cold War-era bunker in Kilrea

Proposed home elevations

In 2014, the Bushvally Radio Club restored the bunker and used it as a club radio shack. It is now one of only five remaining bunkers in Northern Ireland.

The statement continued:

“A network of 1,518 underground monitoring posts was built across the UK to house volunteer staff from the Royal Observer Corps (ROC), who, in the event of a nuclear attack, were tasked with recording the blast yield, location, and drift of radioactive clouds caused by the detonation of Soviet nuclear weapons. Their results would have been transmitted to a regional ROC group headquarters, which for Northern Ireland was the 31 Group HQ in Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn.

“As many of the bunkers have not remained intact, it is imperative that the remaining bunkers are protected and adapted to allow the social history relating to them to be discovered and remembered. It is our opinion that the adaptive reuse of this structure preserves both its built fabric and its cultural heritage.”