Kids in Museums Takeover day 2025 – Porthcurno Underground

Hello! We are being ‘taken over’ online by a local college student who spent a work placement week with our team at PK Porthcurno back in June.

During the placement, the student had the opportunity to experience working behind the scenes of our museum and do research in our WW2 underground bunker and Collections Archive. The student chose to take a range of photographs of objects of special interest and wrote a short report ‘Porthcurno Underground’.

We hope you enjoy the photographs of some of the chosen objects from our collections on display, as well as reading about what was discovered.

Edmund Nuttall, sons & co were the main contractors for the tunnel build.
Most of the workforce labourers were from Penzance
In early August, experienced miners were hired and placed in each gang, tin minors from Geevor mine, St Just and coal miners from Manchester, men from London were also hired to operate heavy calibre machinery.
When it was completed, the main instrument was 26ft wide, 23ft high and 150ft long.
The second tunnel containing offices and plant ensured 139ft.
The escape tunnel was 119 steps in order if invasion.
The entrance was protected by blast proof steel doors and guarded by military police.
The original cost was £25,000-£30,000.
However, due to altercations the final cost was £77,063.
Blast proof doors
A foot thick
Thick rubber seals to make them gas proof
Circles of gas-sensitive paints on the doors were also used to warn of the attack.

On the 7^th September 1940, the Luftwaffe began flying night raids over London and other major cities.
These happened night after night, with few breaks up until the following summer.
Employees reported “the hours of darkness were spent cramped in a garden shelter or lying on bare boards under the stairs.”
24^th July 1944 a flying bomb hit the Electra house in London. Head office of cable and wireless.
With 2 people dying and all 400 men working were back to their stations within 20 minutes of the attack. Which led to more telegraph traffic to Porthcurno.