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A series of government reports circulated in the early and mid 1950s highlighted the fragility of Britain's existing telephone network as the weakest element in her nuclear defence system. Both government defence communications and communications between remote stations and Operations Centres on the newly developed
ROTOR radar system depended upon this network of vulnerable, pre-war landline cables. Most of these trunk cables passed through the centres of large cities which would be likely targets
in a nuclear attack . To partially rectify this system new diversionary cables were laid to circumvent the target conurbations and
new bomb-proof semi-underground repeater stations were built at the nodes of this new system.
- Nick McCamley - Cold
War Secret Nuclear Bunkers
On the North side of Portsdown,
at the end of a purpose built concrete road, stands the BT Assessment
Centre. This was formerly a
GPO hardened telephone repeater station, as described above, and was built in the early
1950s. There were only 8 PR1 and PR2 stations ever built.
I once believed that this
site had a connection with the London
Road Tunnel Shelter, but this proved to be unfounded.
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