Where is Guardian telephone exchange?

Guardian telephone exchange is in West Midlands, in the United Kingdom — coordinates 53.4778°, -2.2414°.

Gardens · West Midlands

Guardian telephone exchange

Guardian telephone exchange — a garden in england-west-midlands, United Kingdom.

Chinese business signs, Manchester - geograph.org.uk - 3813089 — Andrew Hill — CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons licence

Plan your visit

Typical visit: 1 h–2.5 h
Best time of year: Spring & summer (Apr–Sep)

Guardian telephone exchange is a garden of interest in england-west-midlands, United Kingdom — drawn from open-data sources for visitor reference. See the linked Wikipedia article for the full description.

Photo gallery

From the Wikipedia article

Guardian Exchange was an underground telephone exchange built in Manchester from 1954 to 1957. It was built together with the Anchor exchange in Birmingham and the Kingsway exchange in London – all believed to provide hardened communications in the event of nuclear war; as well as linking the UK government in London to the US Government in Washington, D.C. by means of a secure and hardened transatlantic telephone cable making landfall near Oban and running through Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham. Today, the underground site is used for telephone cabling. Constructed at a depth of below 35 metres (115 ft), the tunnels are about 2 metres (80 in) in diameter. The exchange cost around £4 million (approximately £126 million in 2015 prices), part of which was funded by the United Kingdom's NATO partners.

Excerpt from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0. See the source article linked in Sources below.

Background

History

Construction began following the clearance of the land between York Street and Piccadilly Bus Station, for the building of The Piccadilly Plaza complex. The site was surrounded by high, wooden fencing and it was hoped that no-one would suspect that the 'foundation works' were taking an inordinately long time. Huge amounts of construction materials entered the site, over a long period of time, before any above-ground works could be sighted. The Guardian exchange equipment was housed in two levels of tunnels beginning under the lower levels of the Piccadilly Plaza and extending south-west under the old 'Central' telephone exchange, on (New) York Street, and following the line of George Street…

Sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0.