Corsham's Hidden Landscape

Abstract

Corsham, in rural Wiltshire south-west of Chippenham (UK), is a multi-layered above-ground and below-ground site that encompasses historic components relating to nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial and military heritage. This article focuses on its subterranean side, which is of particular archaeological significance but which we argue can be investigated and experienced as a landscape. Created in the nineteenth century for the mining of Bath stone, in the Second World War its network of deep tunnels and caverns was converted to accommodate an ammunition depot, aircraft engine factory and an RAF command centre. Arguably the most significant use of this vast below-ground domain, however, came during the Cold War, as the UK’s Central Government War Headquarters, (CGWHQ), known at the time under code names such as ‘Burlington’ and ‘Turnstile’. Finally decommissioned by the military in 2004, after almost 40 years of ‘mothballing’ and slow decay, it has now become a focus of heritage study and interest, and (although inaccessible) is emerging as an iconic landscape of memory, parts of which now have statutory protection. This article presents the results of applying landscape-based approaches to the subterranean domain of what is too easily considered purely as a heritage site.