For sale: Secret network of tunnels 100ft under London » Housing » 24dash.com

Bond villains in the market for a new lair, take note: a secret network of tunnels 100 feet under central London is going on sale today.

The Kingsway Tunnels were built in 1940 as deep air-raid shelters and have since been used as a "reserve war room", public record library and the telephone exchange which connected the Cold War hotline between the presidents of the US and USSR.

The Post Office took over the tunnels after the Second World War, and now its successor, BT, is putting them up for sale.

With 77,000 square feet of space under the centre of the capital up for grabs, offers around the £5 million mark are expected.

Access to the mile-long system of horizontal and vertical shafts is through unmarked doors in the street on High Holborn, and the site is fully equipped with electricity, water supply and ventilation equipment - making it the perfect place to hole up and hide from 007, though aspiring Blofelds will have to provide their own white cat.

The Public Record Office used the tunnels for a while to store 400 tons of secret documents, before the complex was turned into a "trunk exchange" to connect long distance telephone calls in the days before the subscriber trunk dialling (STD) code.

It was built to hold 8,000 people during air raids, and in its days as an exchange housed around 80 workers, who enjoyed a canteen and recreation room - complete with snooker table.

BT put the site up for sale in 1996 but failed to find a buyer, but now the company hopes to find a Government department or large company to move in and make the site productive again.

The unique nature of the site means it is unsuitable for conversion into a hotel or office, BT said.

Suggestions for the tunnels include car showroom, cinema, snooker club, nightclub, archery or firing range, social club for Tube workers and storeroom for unwanted bankers.

Elaine Hewitt, group property director for BT, said: "We are looking for a purchaser with the imagination and stature to return the tunnels to productive use.

"The site has the most fantastic history and, now that we have no requirement for it for telecommunications use, it is right that we should offer it to the market."

The Kingsway Tunnels feature in Griff Rhys Jones's World's Greatest Cities programme on ITV1 tonight.

Subterranea Britannica, a society devoted to the study of man-made underground structures, held a meeting in the tunnels in 1996.

The group's website said the tunnels were extended by the Government in the early 1980s with the addition of a bunker and briefing room.

Writing on the site, John Warrick, who worked at the telephone exchange, said the place had "an odour all of its own... a combination smell of wax floor polish and PVC cable. This had an extra smell. The chlorine added to the plenum plant that washed the air before it was circulated."

Mr Warrick added that the major complaint among workers was that they never managed to correct the slope on the recreation room snooker table.