No evidence of any sleeping accommodation exists but rest rooms, toilets and a kitchen are there. Conversations with operators on other such sites indicate, however, that it would be a rare installation that didn’t have a standard pattern RAF bed sneaked in somewhere. There are two sets of toilets and two rest rooms connected by a small kitchen. The people manning the station lived in a small domestic site at Stony Lane, Shoreham and were driven in each day to work.
One amusing, and embarrassing, incident arose when a US Congressman revealed that, due to a shortage of trained manpower, the stations were only being manned from dawn to dusk, Monday to Friday. Since the whole ROTOR project was classified Top Secret and was considered to be a major part of the West’s deterrent system there were a lot of diplomatic problems as a result.
The first room is the male toilets, still complete with all the original fittings. The division between Officers’ and Other Ranks’ facilities isn’t obvious at this stage.
On the floor is a tea-chest full of old pianola rolls. Some are still in perfect condition even with their seals still intact. Many are decaying badly however where some water has been spilled on them.
Adjacent to the toilets is the, larger, female rest room. This is a pleasantly large room and would have been quite well used. Fatigue was an ever-present problems for the screen operators, who had to take regular breaks, and it was an awfully long walk to get to anywhere else. The ‘en-suite’ facilities round the corner to the right are also still in pretty good condition.
The small kitchen is between the two rest rooms. Everything except the sink and the extractor hood have been removed. Access to the first rest room is via the doorway at the rear and there is a hatch connecting to the second rest room. The size precludes any large scale catering but, since the normal crew would only have been 10 or so, there was no real need for it. Regular brews and light meals would have been more appropriate since not everyone could be free at the same time.
The male rest-room is smaller and has access to the kitchen via a hatch in the wall. It is interesting to note that the females have a full doorway to the kitchen – perhaps it was assumed that the majority of the work done there would be done by them. In fact, the majority of reminiscences have an airman acting as tea-boy most of the time.
The other two rooms at the end of the central corridor are quite bare except for large amounts of rubbish and debris. This all seems to be left from the time when the bunker was used to store documents etc and none of it seemed to have any connection with the operational times. No photographs are provided since they give no useful information.
The final room is now known to have housed the electrical switch-gear and fuse/circuit breakers etc for the internal electrical supply but nothing remains and the rubbish obscures any useful signs of fixtures and fittings.
