(I apologize for the image quality in this story. These images were taken in 2013, before I got my current camera.)

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” may have been Sir Winston Churchill state of mind 24-7 but in the Churchill War Rooms it really is always 5 o’clock, but for an entirely different reason. Time to pour some brandy and check it out!

The other day I watched Darkest Hour, a biopic about Churchill’s first month as Prime Minister during World War II and the Dunkirk evacuation. I thought the movie, historical inaccuracies and liberties aside, did a good job of portraying the period and Gary Oldman was an enjoyable Churchill. I got really excited while watching it when Churchill arrives at what’s now HM Treasury, an imposing, columned government buildings that’s as English as dry humour. (the kind with an unnecessary ‘u’.) Quickly passing through the marble halls and making his way down the seemingly bottomless Stairwell 15 he enters the Cabinet War Rooms.

The Cabinet War Rooms, now Churchill War Rooms, was were Britain’s war was charted and where the War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff met during emergencies.

It was initially conceived as a temporary emergency shelter for cabinet meetings in 1938. The New Public Offices’ (now HM Treasury) basement was chosen because of its central location and because the unusually strong building above it was more likely to absorb bombs before they made it to the basement. A bomb-vulnerable bomb shelter, its primary armor would not be steel or concrete, but secrecy. The emergency bunker began operations on Aug. 27, 1939, just days before the first panzers rolled into Poland.

Though operational at the time and permanently staffed, Churchill did not use the war rooms during the period Darkest Hour covers. He visited the map rooms when he needed to but didn’t seem fond of the place and only held meetings there when absolutely necessary during air raids. For safety. This is from a man who preferred to observe air raids from the building’s roof.

The first regular cabinet meeting held in the CWR was on Oct. 15, 1940 at 5 o’clock. This was near the tail end of the Battle of Britain. Though set in May 1940, I imagine the movie captured the war room’s atmosphere during that period perfectly.

The narrow and cluttered passageways, with all its furnishings and wall-mounted devices further squeezing the limited space, and low overhead with exposed pipes and girders reminded me of a ship during my visit. As a Sailor I could tell it would be claustrophobic when this place was fully manned, and wo-manned, up during the war. Seeing it on screen, filled with a dynamic, constantly moving human presence in a volume it was never designed to contain, under the dim lights and cigarette smoke fog, which I imagine masked the scent of the sanitary facilities, brings the scene to unexaggerated life and makes the location its own character within the film. (I was actually a little surprised when I learned this was filmed on a set and not on location.)

There was also signage letting personnel know what the weather was like top-side. Surprisingly “English” wasn’t an option.

A secret facility where compartmentalized information was both metaphorical and quite physical it looks like it would have been an exhausting place to work. I’m inquisitive, it’s in my job requirements and working in a place as confining as this while wearing mental blinders to all but need to know information would have wore me out quickly.

Wartime employees though seemed to suffer through it as well as could be expected as the temporary measure that was the CWR stayed in daily operation until the day after Japan capitulated, Aug. 16, 1945. On that day business was concluded, lights turned off and the door locked.

Seemingly the lights came back on a few decades later and it just took an addition of plexiglass and placards to convert the rooms into a museum. I exaggerate slightly, it may be the brandy in me, but parts of the facility was kept ‘as is’ and I couldn’t tell those parts from the restored parts that weren’t. These include meeting rooms, Churchill’s private telegraph room with the hotline to Roosevelt (installed in 1943, not 1940), engineering spaces, map rooms and halls, which give a ‘complete’ feel to the facility so that its different facets can be explored, not just those involving Churchill.

Note the chamber pot lurking under the bed. Up-top it may be 1945 but its still 1845 down here!

My favorite room is the map room, with its massive pin-pricked-to-pieces world map that noted the movement of every British naval convoy over the course of the war. It’s original, as are the desks still covered in brightly colored phones and surrounded by a sea of wooden beams to shore up the reinforced ceiling, a reminder that this wasn’t intended to be a permanent solution. This is where the British military tracked its war and prepared daily morning reports for the King and Prime Minister.

Leading up to the map rooms is a corridor where Churchill’s BBC speeches are played on a staticky loop. Unlike the film, he didn’t record his first speech down here until Sept. 11, 1940, during the Battle of Britain and four months after the Dunkirk evacuation.

Overall, the war rooms are so well maintained with small details it’s as close as it can get to being a living history display without actors in period dress to walk the halls and dole out information, which incidentally they would not have been able to when it was in operation. Need to know and all that. (Look out for the sugar ration in the map room, there’s a story behind it.)

The Churchill part of the war rooms name comes from the Churchill Museum that was installed in 2005. This museum has copious personal artifacts and looks at his life from beginning to end. Enjoyment is based on your opinion of Churchill. If you dislike him, its self-aggrandizing fluff with toys on display, if you like him it’s a treasure house of that which he left behind. No opinion? A positive, bloody good museum surrounded by the place where part of this history happened.

A cabinet war room message from the day Germany surrendered inside the Churchill Museum. Shame they couldn’t fit a Churchill tank down here.

When visiting I recommend taking full advantage of the audioguide as it fleshes out the experience.

England is an amazing place when it comes to history, the war rooms were the first museum I visited in the country and it set a high expectation for what museums would be like there. The war rooms were put were they were for their central location and that’s still true today. You know that famous photo spot with the red phone booth and Big Ben in the background? Right around the corner along with Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey and a laundry list of must see places.

If you’d like to pay your respects to Churchill, his statue is in Parliament Square (right where he said it should be) and the man himself is buried in Westminster Abbey just around the corner from both. To skip the tourist crowd and the line wrapped around the Abbey to get in and just see Churchill’s grave go to the Abbey’s exit (It’s the giant front door) and ask the guard to see the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Churchill is buried beside him.

If you do this please DO NOT take advantage of the situation and explore the abbey. That would be terribly rude.

LOCATION

Clive Steps, King Charles St., Westminster, London SW1A 2AQ, UK

Phone: 44 20 7416 5000

References

History vs. Hollywood: Darkest Hour
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/darkest-hour/

Most historic information for this article came from my visit and the IWM Churchill War Rooms Guidebook.