Broadway Tower

This is a Folly which you can see when travelling down the M5 from a great distance and is a symbol to us of home-coming.

The brainchild of Capability Brown and built by the 6th Earl of Coventry in 1799 it stands 55 feet high atop Beacon Hill at a height of 1,024 feet - the second highest point in the Cotswolds.

It was frequently visited by the Pre-Raphaelite artists such as William Morris, Burne-Jones and Rossetti as a country retreat. Later it was used as an observation post by the during the world wars for tracking approaching aircraft.

What made me bring the car to a stop was the sign which I found astonishing, saying 'Nuclear bunker tours', which I didn't know existed! 180m away and opened up for viewing in 2011, a small concrete bunker had been constructed and used by the Royal Observer Corps between 1959 and 1991 to provide early warning about incoming missiles during the Cold War.

The downside for the occupants, should a missile have been sighted, was that it would have obviously been curtains for them but the alarm would have been raised, with information being passed like a spider's web to the other 1,653 other mini bunkers throughout the country. The V-bombers and Thor missiles would then have been activated. This system was considered more reliable than radar.

Tours round are in the summer so that will be interesting.