Entrance to a Cold War bunker beneath Swyn y Coed

Description

When WW2 began, the Observer Corps was an essential part of the air defence system. Radar was only sited on the coast and our defences needed to track aircraft as they flew inland. In Wales, where there were many training airfields there was the additional need to track aircraft which were lost , particularly near high ground. The observers were mostly volunteers, fitting their duties in with other work.
From 3 September 1939 until four days after Victory in Europe, on 8 May 1945, observer posts were manned continuously. In Talley the MoD had a small plot of land on which they sited a hut, about the size of a garden shed, in which the Observers could shelter. We are told that members of the Home Guard also visited the hut but often found the Edwinsford warmer.
Observers in Talley would have seen German bombers heading north to Liverpool or Belfast and would telephone information to a Southern Command Control room, in the basement of the Lyric Theatre in King Street, Carmarthen.
In the mid 1950's the Royal Observer Corps gave up its role of spotting enemy aircraft and took on the task of monitoring nuclear blasts and the spread of fallout. In 1961 the MoD dug a bunker on the Talley site, just one of 1550 3 man monitoring posts designed to survive nearby explosions..
Little more than a small mound was visible, with a small hatchway (2'x2'), an air vent and sensors to measure the bomb power. Underground there was a cramped work area, provision for bunk beds and a chemical toilet. It was calculated that nearly 50 % of the posts would have been ineffective because they relied on over ground telephone lines but the Talley bunker had underground links, confirmed by John Morgan who recalls a JCB digger cutting them. We cannot find that anyone from Talley manned this bunker; apparently they came from Llandeilo (the landlord of The Angel?) and Ammanford.
Happily the Cold War never went “hot” and the sites were all closed in 1991.
In 1996 the land was sold by the MoD and a bungalow was built. Rather than dig up the bunker the builders just built over it, and incorporated the hatchway into the floor of one of the rooms. And so the bunker remains, still with the labelled clipboard pegs, a reminder of Talley's part in the real and anticipated terrors of the last century.