No 1 Factory Air Raid Shelter

Brian Dominic

Late 1960s

In the late 1960s I worked in the Physical Laboratory, in Beckenham Road Main, off the corridor where the “Rogues Gallery” of pictures of employees with over 25 years service was situated: both my paternal grandfather and an uncle were there. Because of the nature of my job, I got to roam all over the Radford site in the course of my work. One place was our store: experimental cigarettes were stored in there in case they were ever needed. This was situated in the No 1 Factory air raid shelter, which was entered by a door in the yard of No 1 Factory, by the archway from Player Street. The stairs went down a LONG way, until you arrived in the shelter itself - a long, straight, tunnel with seats down each side, and some old racking where we stacked our stuff. The shelter was visited twice a day by the firemen for a very odd reason. Old employees will tell you that we enjoyed “Music While You Work” twice a day. This continued even after The Light Programme stopped broadcasting it: the control room for the Tannoy system was housed in the shelter and twice a day a fireman descended to play records over the Tannoy for 45 minutes.