Ilkley, West Yorkshire - England
The Pump House, a former water pumping station, is now a three bedroom and two bath home. Its exterior stays true to the origins of the building, while the interior is all modern.
The Pump House is currently available for sale here.
This airy rooftop apartment located in London’s sought-after area of Shoreditch has been realized by the British practice Tonkin Liu. Built atop an old brick warehouse, the two-story family house boasts six bedrooms, a play area, a living room and a terrace. The house is entered via a bridge that comes from a neighboring building. The lower floor is divided into 5 bedrooms and a play area with a sunken conversation pit. All the rooms open out onto a terrace. The main living space is a tall room on the upper level. In the centre of the space a tower, housing the polycarbonate bathroom, rises up through the structure to bring in light. To the west the master bedroom can be closed off with a giant sliding door. A cantilevered balcony overlooks the city to the south. A spiral staircase leads up to the green roof.
In Wiltshire, England, 120ft below the surface, lies Burlington, aka Cold War City – the 35 acre subterranean complex built in the 1950s to house the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan’s cabinet and 4,000 civil servants in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack
It was equipped with the second largest telephone exchange in Britain and a BBC studio from where the prime minister could make broadcasts to what remained of the nation. A system of underground power stations would have provided electricity to the 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modelled on the Red Lion in Whitehall.
A spur railway was built inside a tunnel on the main London to Bristol line, linking it to the bunker. It was meant as an escape route for the royal family to flee London in the event of an attack.
The bunker’s very existence was meant to be top secret until it was decommissioned in 2004. Inside, it is like stepping back 50 years. Hundreds of swivel chairs delivered in 1959 are still unpacked. There are boxes of government-issue glass ashtrays, lavatory brushes and civil service tea sets. Pictures of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Grace Kelly are pinned to the walls.
