R.O.C. Christow
This Nuclear Monitoring Station was opened in September 1960 and closed in September 1991. Please note that this ROC Post is private property and locked. No attempt should be made to force entry.
Location:
Roadside parking is available nearby, and a short walk up a defined woodland track brings you to GZ. You will need to leave the track to the left (East).
The cache is placed about 10m away from the R.O.C - just walk a little further in to see it.
The Royal Observer Corps
This civil defence organisation was for intended for visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated between 1925 and 1995 and was composed mostly of civillian spare-time volunteers.
The ROC was restructured in 1955 to include monitoring of nuclear fallout in the event of a nuclear war. Between 1958 and 1968 a countrywide building programme resulted in a network of 1,563 underground monitoring posts, approximately eight miles apart, distributed throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, at an estimated cost of almost £5,000 each. This is the site of one of them.
In the event of a nuclear war, ROC volunteers would stay in these tiny bunkers and monitor environmental effects, using the radio to report their readings. One must try to imagine how they would feel in this situation, trapped by radiation underground, in the knowledge that their friends and family may well be dead. One must be grateful that the threat level has since reduced, making these posts redundant.
Status of the ROC - LOCKED
All surface features remain intact and in reasonable repair. The lid is secured with heavy duty padlocks and no contact information is now visible. The area is quite well hidden and overgrown, but a faint path leads inwards from the north.
More info:
This cache is placed in accordance to the Dartmoor Geocaching Guidelines