Along Salt Lane in Cliffe lies an overgrown pair of air raid shelter tunnels installed to protect industrial workers of the Alpha cement works in WW2. It is suggested that the two shelters remaining today were actually two entrance-ways into a larger shelter capable of holding hundreds of people, although they seem to be of a self-sufficient design so may be complete. Each tunnel was S-shaped with two toilet cubicle sections at either end. One end held the entrance, the other an emergency exit.
Following an English Heritage archeological survey and a few brief mentions online, we managed to track down a set of air-raid shelters built during the Second World War down Salt Lane near Cliffe ponds. Thinking we’d have trouble locating the shelters; supposedly hidden in an overgrown area, we luckily spotted the two entrances peeping out of the hedgerow on a roadside corner whilst driving by. Both chambers had a divided toilet area adjacent to the entrance, and turned two corners in an ‘S-shape’. You could see marks on the walls low down where timber seating for the workers would have been. The ends of both shelters were blocked with infilled earth. The right-hand shelter was considerably cleaner than the other; with a distinct lack of graffiti, burn marks, and cave spiders compared to the other.
