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From The Times
October 16, 2008

For sale: mile-long tunnel complex. Price: £5m

A hidden network of tunnels 100ft under Central London goes on sale today.

The Kingsway Tunnels were built in 1940 as deep air-raid shelters and have since been used as a war command headquarters, a library and the telephone exchange that connected the presidents of the US and the USSR in the Cold War.

The Post Office took over the tunnels after the Second World War, and now its successor, BT, has put them up for sale. With 77,000 sq ft (7,153 sq m) of space under the centre of the capital available, offers of £5 million are expected.

Access to the mile-long system of horizontal and vertical shafts is through unmarked doors in High Holborn, and the site is fully equipped with electricity, water supply and ventilation equipment.

The Public Record Office used the tunnels for a while to store 400 tonnes of secret documents, before the complex became a trunk exchange to connect long-distance telephone calls in the days before the subscriber trunk-dialling code.

It could hold 8,000 people during air raids and when it was an exchange housed about 80 staff, with a canteen and recreation room, pictured.

The tunnels feature in Greatest Cities of the World with Griff Rhys Jones on ITV1 tonight.

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