Churchill War Rooms

The Churchill War Room, which became part of the Imperial War Museum in the 1980s, was opened to the public in 1984. It later got re-constructed and was opened again in 2005, back when it was known as the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. It got the title of Churchill War Rooms in 2010.

The place was recognised and accorded the status it has today post the war ended, and came under the purview of first the Ministry of Works, and later under the Department of Environment.

Since the time the War Rooms came into existence, they were constantly being used for meetings and were guarded at every hour of the day by either the Royal Navy officers, the British Army, and even the Royal Air Force. They were also used as dormitories for the staff, private accommodation for the ministers and military, room for important work, for telephone operators, etc.

During Neville Chamberlain’s reign as the Prime Minister, there was only one meeting held in the Cabinet Room. Post that, upon Churchill’s appointment as the Prime Minister, a number of important meetings were held at the place. As per historical records, there were 115 meetings held, the last being on 28 March 1945. Churchill had said about these rooms that, “This is the room from which I will direct the war”, and so he did.

Initially, the place wasn’t bomb-proof and would have crumpled to nothing with one attack. It was later that the security of the Cabinet War Rooms was increased during the Blitz, the bombings against Britain. A 5 feet thick concrete layer was installed for this purpose, and later they kept extending the width to increase protection. By 1941, the size of the slab was almost 3 times of what it was when it started.

During the war, Churchill also used one of the Cabinet Rooms as his office cum bedroom. It was during that time that he made 4 broadcasts from that room. Even though he had a place allocated there to sleep, he would hardly sleep there. Goes without saying, the atmosphere during that time would have been tense and mentally impacting for everyone, and that can be one of the reasons why Churchill never preferred sleeping underground. The place did not have a proper drainage system, which was also a problem for him, as he was in the habit of bathing twice in a day.

One of the most revered attractions of the place is the Date Table, which exhibits the 90 years of Winston Churchill’s life with documents and photographs as well to support it. The place also has a number of medals and honours conferred to war veterans, along with Churchill’s Nobel Prize, a silver-plated trophy in the shape of a book, which he got in 1953 for his contribution to Literature.