Office of Works and Successors: Registered Files: Deep Tube Shelters

This series contains files relating to the maintenance and disposal of the World War II underground air-raid shelters (deep tube shelters) constructed in London at Clapham Common, Clapham North, Stockwell, Belsize Park, Goodge Street and Camden Town.

The files have been selected from two separate series: central policy occupancy charging files (PCC series), being special cases re-registered from the ESS series; and the London and Southeast Estate rationalisation disposal files (PCL5 series) relating to the Underground Works (London) Act, 1956. Under this Act the land and works relating to deep tube shelters were vested in the Minister of Works. Some files date from after the creation of the Department of the Environment and the Property Services Agency.

There are papers relating to the cost of maintenance and future uses of the shelters. Some files contain photographs.

All the shelters were sold to London Underground Ltd in 1998.

For records of the Ministry of Home Security HO 200

See also HO 250

For records relating to construction of shelters WORK 28

For records of the Property Services Agency London Region (maintenance and repair) CM 8

For records of the Directorate of Civil Accommodation CM 37

• Department of the Environment, 1970-1997
• Ministry of Public Building and Works, 1962-1970
• Ministry of Works, 1943-1962
• Property Advisers to the Civil Estate, 1996-2000
• Property Holdings, PSA Services, 1990-1995
• Property Services Agency, 1972-1990

from 2006 Office of Government Commerce

Topics

Railways

Conflict

Operations, battles and campaigns

From the mid-1930s, the Office of Works and its successors were involved in provision of structures for civil defence in the event of possible war. Work in this area continued after the Second World War.

In late 1940 it was decided that the Ministry of Health should deal with the internal management of large shelters, with the Ministry of Home Security remaining responsible for the supply, distribution and construction of shelters.

A Tube Shelters Committee was set up jointly by these two Ministries. Its activities centred on the preparation and management of deep underground shelters in the London region. At the end of the war some of these shelters were transferred to the War Office and others to the Ministry of Works.

The Ministry of Works became the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works and, in 1970, responsibility for the shelters in their care passed to the Department of the Environment and thence to the Property Services Agency (PSA) until 1990. As special cases, the shelters then became the responsibility of Property Holdings which, in 1966, was renamed Property Advisers to the Civil Estate (PACE).