Pontefract Cold War-era nuclear bunker sells for double asking price as Russia and Ukraine tensions heighten

Jon Graves’s Cold War era ex-Royal Observer Corps pit smashed its £15,000 guide price when it was bought for £29,000 at an auction on Thursday.

The businessmen had lovingly restored the 15-deep fallout shelter - which was manned by observers from 1964 to 1991 - after purchasing it three years ago.

And he begrudgingly decided to put the military-grade hide-out under the hammer, which was snapped up by an unknown proxy bidder.

The purchase comes after a spike in inquiries for underground bunkers as tensions escalate between Russia and Ukraine.

Russian ‘nuclear-capable’ strikes in Ukraine have this week heightened fears of all-out war.

Jon, who had put the bunker for auction after making plans to move to Dubai, said Russia's invasion of Ukraine had increased interest in the property.

He said: “It’s definitely topical with the way American politics is at the moment and with Russia and Ukraine fighting.

“It wouldn’t survive a direct hit, that’s for sure, but from a novel perspective, it’s definitely interesting.”

Jon said the freehold property did not have listed status, meaning future buyers could redesign it as they wished after obtaining planning permission.

He went on: “It’s certainly big enough to record music in it.

"If you live locally, you could just probably go and chill out in it. It’s a big enough space that you could go down.”

Jon, who owns multiple businesses, said he had always loved the idea of having one of the 1,500 observation bunkers dotted throughout the country.

So when the pit came up for sale close to his home in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, the military aficionado jumped at the chance to buy it.

The shelter, which sits on a remote 40ft by 50ft plot of land, was originally capped off with a six-inch layer of concrete.

But Jon was stunned when he finally chiselled through the crust to find it was watertight and in relatively good condition.

He said: “I’d always wanted to own one, but every time I saw one come up, they were all down south, miles away from home.

“We’d never been in it. We took a punt really that it was going to be ok. The top of it was in a reasonable condition - all be it with the cap on top.

“And when we first opened it, it was bone dry inside, which was great. Then of course we could get on with decorating and renovating it.”

Jon said if a nuclear weapon exploded somewhere in Britain, it was assumed that standard communication lines would be heavily disrupted.

So observers in the bunkers would have been tasked with looking out for light emanating from the bomb or recording nuclear fallout with instruments.

It’s believed that Jon’s bunker, known as Upton ROC, detected radioactive material that spread from the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

And he deliberately chose to renovate the subterranean structure with items harking back to the period when it was in use.

Jon said: “We tried to keep it in the same format, the same layout that was there originally, and I think we did that reasonably well.

“We ripped off all the old polystyrene tiles and cleaned it up, got rid of all the dead mice that were stuck in it, and just kind of decorated it.

“We furnished it and put back in what was already there. So we didn’t put brand new modern beds in, we put old metal beds back in.

“It was always about trying to tastefully restore it to a condition that you could stay and sleep in without the noise from outside.”

Vladimir Putin launched his first suspected intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) strikes against targets in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro this week.

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The decision came after President Zelensky's choice to reportedly hit inside Russia with British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles and long-range US warheads.

Mathew Wright, from the firm Burrowed, which makes ‘fully fitted prefabricated underground bunkers’, said inquiries had ‘doubled’ since Monday.

He said: “In the last six months we’ve had a couple of thousand inquiries. And there probably been double the amount usual of inquires since Monday.”

Andrew Parker, auctioneer and partner at SDL Property Auctions, which sold the bunker, said the huge interest in it was 'not surprising'.

He said: “This is the fourth nuclear bunker we have sold at auction and not surprisingly they have all attracted huge amounts of interest.

“There are not that many relics still around that epitomise the threat and paranoia of the Cold War era in the way a nuclear bunker can.

"And this one had also been beautifully restored, which makes it even more unusual."