'Never Was So Much Owed By So Many To So Few'

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A Brief History
The Cabinet War Rooms
The Churchill Suite
Highlights of the War Rooms

A Brief History of The Imperial War Museum London

In 1917 the Cabinet decided that a National War Museum should be set up to collect and display material relating to the Great War, which was then still being fought. The interest taken by the Dominion governments led to the museum being given the title of Imperial War Museum. It was formally established by Act of Parliament in 1920 and a governing Board of Trustees appointed.

On 7 July 1936 the Duke of York, shortly to become King George VI, reopened the Museum in its present home. The Museum was closed to the public from September 1940 to November 1946 and vulnerable collections were evacuated to stores outside London. Most of the exhibits survived the war, but a Short seaplane, which had flown at the Battle of Jutland, was shattered when a German bomb fell on the Naval Gallery on 31 January 1941 and some of the naval models were damaged by the blast.

At the outset of the Second World War the Museum’s terms of reference were enlarged to cover both world wars and they were again extended in 1953 to include all military operations in which Britain or the Commonwealth have been involved since August 1914.

The building which accommodates the Imperial War Museum London was formerly the central portion of Bethlem Royal Hospital, or Bedlam, as it was commonly known. Designed by James Lewis, it was completed in 1815. Sidney Smith’s dome was added in 1846 and contained the chapel. The east and west wings were demolished in the early 1930s to make room for the park which now surrounds the Museum.

Bethlem Royal Hospital dates back to 1247, when Simon Fitz-Mary, a wealthy alderman and sheriff of London, founded the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem on the site which is now part of Liverpool Street Station. In the fourteenth century the priory began to specialise in the care of the insane. Bethlem was moved to a new building in Moorfields in 1676. Until 1770 there were no restrictions on visitors, and the lunatics, who were often manacled or chained to the walls, were a public attraction. The hospital was housed in the present building from 1815 to 1930, when it was transferred to Eden Park near Beckenham, Kent.

Patients included Mary Nicholson who tried to assassinate George III in 1786; Jonathan Martin, committed in 1829 after setting fire to York Minster; the painters Richard Dadd and Louis Wain and the architect A W N Pugin who designed the Houses of Parliament and St George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral opposite the Museum.

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The Cabinet War Rooms

The First World War unleashed a new threat to mankind: the aerial bombardment of cities. The bombing of undefended cities was practised during the First World War and the Spanish Civil War, causing many civilian casualties and threatening governmental stability.

The fear that cities, particularly London, would be the first targets of an enemy conducting a war against Great Britain troubled successive British governments in the 1920s and 1930s. As the possibility of conflict increased, the question became more urgent as to how the Prime Minister, his Cabinet and the central core of the military command could be protected in the event of a war involving the European powers. Right: The results of the bombardment of Granollers, Spain, on 31 May 1938 by Italian and German aircraft. Over 500 people were killed.

A Secure Site

RAF planners drew a horrifying picture of 600 tons of bombs raining down on the capital, causing 200,000 casualties in just the first week of a war.

Schemes for the evacuation of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and its administrative machinery were prepared throughout the 1920s and 1930s, among them the adaption of basement offices and the tunnelling of deep shelters in central London and in the capital's north-west suburbs.

Left: The outer wall of the New Public Offices showing the solid concrete apron put in place to limit bomb damage to the Cabinet War Rooms below.

Eventually the concern that the public might think their leaders were deserting them persuaded the planners to look to the possibility of providing a secure 'Central War Room' nearer to the traditional home of government. Right: Blast damage in an office in 10 Downing Street, 14 October 1940 and below left: The 'sand bagged' entrance to the Cabinet War Rooms.

Constructing the Rooms

Work began in June 1938 on adapting these humble storage areas, ten feet below ground, to house the central core of government and a unique military information centre. The events of the Munich crisis in the early autumn speeded up the process.

Seen by most planners as temporary, the rooms were constructed under the watchful eye of Major-General Sir Hastings Ismay, assisted by Major Sir Leslie Hollis, and became fully operational on 27 August 1939, exactly a week before the German invasion of Poland and Britain's declaration of war.

This 'temporary' measure was to serve as the central shelter for government and the military strategists for the next six years.

Right: A sandbag pillbox being constructed outside the New Public Offices, spring 1940

With the surrender of the Japanese forces in August 1945, the rooms were no longer needed, and on 16 August 1945 the lights in the Central Map Room were switched off and the door was locked. The complex was left intact and was undisturbed until an announcement by Parliament in 1948 ensured its preservation as a historic site. Left: VJ Day celebrations London, 1945.

Access to the rooms was possible, though highly restricted, and few were even aware of the complex’s existence. It was only in 1981, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided that the site should be made more easily accessible, that its history became more widely known. Over the following three years, the Imperial War Museum and the Department of the Environment arranged for the careful preservation and restoration of the complex, making the necessary adaptations in order to give visitors an intimate view of the rooms and the lives of those who worked in them. 

The Blitz

Blitz, the German word for lightning, was applied by the British press to the tempest of bombing raids carried out over Great Britain in 1940 and 1941. Concentrated direct bombing began on 7 September 1940 with heavy raids on London. The scale of the attack rapidly escalated; over September alone the German Air Force dropped 5,300 tons of explosives on the capital. German planes soon extended their targets to include coastal ports and other centres of production. Right: A Heinkel III flying over the Isle of Dogs, London, during the Battle of Britain, 1940

The infamous raid of 14 November 1940 on Coventry brought a still-worse twist to the campaign when 500 tons of explosives and nearly 900 incendiary bombs were dropped in ten hours of unrelenting bombardment, a tactic later emulated on an even greater scale by the RAF’s attacks on German cities. Left: The remains of Coventry Cathedral, 17 November 1940. The British population had been warned in September 1939 that air attacks were likely, and civil defence preparations had been started some time before.

Simple corrugated steel Anderson shelters were dug into gardens up and down the country. Larger civic shelters built of brick and concrete were erected in British towns.

A blackout was rigorously enforced. Soon, the night raids began increasing in frequency, and many people virtually took up residence in shelters, giving rise to a new spirit of solidarity and community. In London, many people moved down into the Tube stations. At first actively discouraged by the government, this popular action held sway, and it was a common sight to pass through an Underground station crowded with the sleeping bodies of men, women and children, the platforms piled high with their belongings. Right: Sheltering in the Elephant and Castle Tube station, London

The main air offensive against British cities diminished after May 1941 with the change of direction of the German war machine towards Russia, though sporadic and lethal raids – using increasingly larger bombs – continued for several more years.

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The Churchill Suite

In April 2003 newly restored historic areas of the Cabinet War Rooms were revealed to the public for the first time. Now known as 'The Churchill Suite', these nine historic rooms had lain neglected and unseen since the war. Working from wartime photographs and using original furniture and fittings, the Cabinet War Rooms has faithfully restored these subterranean rooms.

Adapted in 1941, the rooms were originally known as the 'Courtyard Rooms' and were intended to provide a sheltered space where the people Churchill valued most could eat, sleep and work in safety, while the bombs rained down outside. Right: Mrs Churchills bedroom.

Left: Kitchen, Cabinet War Room. This sequence of rooms provided private chambers for Winston Churchill's private office staff and his wife, Clementine, as well as a dining facility for himself and 'Clemmie' and a meeting room for his Chiefs of Staff.

All of these rooms were stripped out at the end of the war and were subsequently used as low-grade storage and even as a gymnasium, until their restoration in 2003. The work of restoration was greatly assisted by a series of detailed photographs taken of the rooms at the end of the war. Using these, every effort was made to make the rooms resemble their original format. Right: Dining Room, Churchill Suite

Although most of the furnishings had to be found from government office basements, second-hand shops and the attics and garages of private individuals, some of the original room contents were kept and have been restored to their original position.

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Highlights of the War Rooms

Every room tells a story...

For further information please visit The Imperial War Museum site www.iwm.org.uk/

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