Legbourne Cold War nuclear bunker sells for £31,000

The Royal Observer Corps bunker is located in Legbourne, Lincolnshire

A Cold War bunker built in Lincolnshire in response to the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack has sold for £31,000.

The underground space at Legbourne, which was built in 1959, was designed to provide protection for members of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC).

It was their job to report on nuclear blasts and fallout following an attack.

The site, with space for three people, was sold by SDL Property Auctions, who described it as a "rare opportunity" to acquire a piece of Cold War history.

The £31,000 price the bunker finally went for at auction beat its guide price of £25,000.

The Legbourne bunker was one of a total of 1,563 ROC monitoring posts built in the UK between 1956 and 1965 at a distance of about 15 miles apart.

Thirty-one larger HQ and control centres were also built.

At each monitoring post, ROC members were provided with a landline telephone, radios and enough food and water to sustain them for 14 days.

The main body of the underground bunker is accessed via a 14ft (4.3m) shaft

Most of the bunkers were decommissioned and sold off in 1993, after the end of the Cold War.

The bunker at Legbourne had previously been bought for £12,500 in 2003 by Army veteran Mark Colledge.

Mr Colledge, from Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Teesside, said he believed he was "having a bit of a midlife crisis" when he bought the site.

"I suppose it was my man cave. Men will always buy things they don't really need," he said.

He added that he had decided to sell it as it was too far from where he lived.