Fan Bay plotting room bunker in Dover's White Cliffs opens to public visits

Public visits to the Fan Bay plotting room bunker in the White Cliffs of Dover begin on Friday 13 November 2026, according to The Guardian.

The bunker lies four metres underground, inside the chalk cliffs on the Kent coast. Winston Churchill ordered its construction. It housed what is described as the first land-based computer-aided targeting system. Targeting systems use calculations to work out where weapons should be aimed. In this case, the plotting room acted as the "brain" for a gun battery that defended Dover and attacked German ships in the Channel, the stretch of water between England and France.

Up to 10 people at a time worked in the room. Its main equipment was a 1.8-metre-long electromechanical computer, a machine that combined mechanical parts with electrical ones, known as a fire direction table. The bunker was mothballed in 1957, and the table was deliberately destroyed that year to stop it falling into enemy hands. The site stayed classified until 1981 and was rediscovered in 2017.

The National Trust, the conservation charity that cares for the site, ran the excavation project at Fan Bay. Jon Stewart led that work and was the first person to enter the bunker after its rediscovery, according to The Guardian.