Military museums · London
Churchill War Rooms
Also known as: Cabinet War Rooms
Churchill's WWII underground cabinet bunker, preserved exactly as he left it in 1945.
Phillip Perry — CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons licence
Plan your visit
- Typical visit
- 2 h–4 h
- Paid entry
- Family-friendly
- Wheelchair accessible
About
The Churchill War Rooms are the underground bunkers in Whitehall where Churchill's wartime cabinet directed Britain through WWII — preserved exactly as the staff left them in August 1945, with maps, telephones, and the Map Room frozen mid-war. Includes the Churchill Museum, the largest single biographical exhibit of Churchill in the world.
Photo gallery
From the Wikipedia article
The Churchill War Rooms is a museum in London and one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. The museum comprises the Cabinet War Rooms, a historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War, and the Churchill Museum, a biographical museum exploring the life of British statesman Winston Churchill. Construction of the Cabinet War Rooms, located beneath the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster, began in 1938. They became fully operational on 27 August 1939, one week before Britain declared war on Germany. The War Rooms remained in operation throughout the Second World War, before being abandoned in August 1945 after the surrender of Japan. After the war, the historic value of the Cabinet War Rooms was recognised. Their preservation became the responsibility of the Ministry of Works and later the Department for the Environment, during which time very limited numbers of the public were able to visit by appointment. In the early 1980s, the Imperial War Museum was asked to take over the administration of the site, and the Cabinet War Rooms were opened to the public in April 1984. The museum was reopened in 2005 following a major redevelopment as the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, but in 2010 this title was shortened to the Churchill War Rooms.
Excerpt from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0. See the source article linked in Sources below.
Background
Architecture
In 1936 the Air Ministry, the British government department responsible for the Royal Air Force, believed that in the event of war enemy aerial bombing of London would cause up to 200,000 casualties per week. British government commissions under Warren Fisher and Sir James Rae in 1937 and 1938 considered that key government offices should be dispersed from central London to the suburbs, and nonessential offices to the Midlands or North West. Pending this dispersal, in March 1938 Sir Hastings Ismay, then Deputy Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, ordered an Office of Works survey of Whitehall to identify a suitable site for a temporary emergency government centre for use during…
Visiting
Steps with the Treasury building on the right and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the left.]] In 1974, the Imperial War Museum was approached by the government and asked to consider taking over the administration of the site. A feasibility study was prepared but came to nothing, the museum feeling it did not have sufficient resources to commit to the War Rooms. In 1981, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, known as an admirer of Winston Churchill, expressed the hope that the Rooms could be opened before the next general election. The Imperial War Museum was again approached. Initially still reluctant, the museum's trustees decided in January 1982 that the museum would take over the…
Sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Coordinates
- 51.5021, -0.1289
- District
- Westminster
- Parish
- Westminster, unparished area
- Postcode
- SW1A 2AQ
- Parliamentary constituency
- Cities of London and Westminster
- Phone
- +44 20 7930 6961
- Established
- 1984
- Official site
- www.iwm.org.uk
Sources
- manual: churchill-war-rooms (manual)
- wikipedia: Churchill War Rooms (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Frequently asked questions
- Where is Churchill War Rooms?
- Churchill War Rooms is in London, United Kingdom (postcode SW1A 2AQ), in the parish of Westminster, unparished area.
- When was Churchill War Rooms built?
- Built or established in 1984.
- Who owns Churchill War Rooms?
- Churchill War Rooms is owned by Imperial War Museums.
- How do I get to Churchill War Rooms?
- Drivers can navigate to postcode SW1A 2AQ. It sits within the Cities of London and Westminster parliamentary constituency.
- How busy is Churchill War Rooms?
- Churchill War Rooms draws around 557,009 visitors a year.