After our meal we made our way down to the secret war time tunnels as we had booked a tour starting at 2pm. The tunnels are a maze of underground rooms and passages dating back to 1797 in some places, and were first used during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1939 the tunnels were adapted into bomb proof headquarters and from June 1940 became a front-line fortress once again.
Whilst we waited for the
tour to begin we perused the posters and pictures in the reception area, all dating from the 1940's. Some of the photographs
showed the WRNS operating the switchboard or working at their desks during the war and it seemed strange to be near to where
they once went about their daily work. I even wondered if the girls in the photographs were still alive? And I admire them
for the work they did.
After the film we were led into the Annexe - a series of hospital tunnels complete with wards, operating theatres, kitchens, bathrooms and foodstores. All of these were found as they would have looked during the war and which can be seen in a series of photographs on the wall towards the end of the Annexe tour before leaving for Casemate level. Throughout the tour we could hear a recording of conversations that might have taken place there, heard the arrival of a pilot who had been shot down and whose leg was badly injured and we followed his progress from the hospital reception area to the operating theatre. Sights, sounds and smells were all similar to how they would have been during the war - the lights were even flickering on and off and you could hear bombs being dropped near by, just as if we had gone back in time to those war time days. After leaving the Annexe and hospital, we walked down a spiral staircase of 72 steps along a corridor whose walls were covered in grafiti dating from the late 1700s. We then entered Casemate level a vast amount of which was used for all the communication equipment that was needed to link to headquarters on the outside. We viewed a 1940's telephone exchange, Admiral Ramsay's naval headquarters (it was from here that he directed Operation Dynamo), a Naval operations room together with plotting table (the original one used during the war), Anti Aircraft operations room, GPO Repeater Station and much more. Prior to the second world war the tunnels, excavated by The Royal Engineers from 1797, were used to house British troops during the Napoleonic Wars. This was the first and only underground barracks in the United Kingdom and housed up to 2,000 men deep inside the chalk cliffs. The Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 and for almost one hundred years the tunnels remained abandoned until just before the onset of the second world war in 1939 when they were once again brought into use to defend the nation. These tunnels remained secret until 1984 and today are visited by thousands of people each week. The tunnels have recently been featured on a British television show, Most Haunted, as there have been sitings of ghosts within the tunnels. Please check out the links below for more information about the tunnels.
Once our tour of the tunnels was over, we headed up to the main castle. Click here to read about the Kings haunted Bed Chamber and
the haunted Battlements.
Dover Castle and Secret Tunnels 
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