‘We've even got a 1940s machine gun outside' - Bloxwich bunker brought back to life for the next generation

A Bloxwich school marked this year’s Remembrance Day by unveiling their historic and carefully restored Second World War bunker.

Field Road Academy Headteacher Diane Newton and site manager Paul Rollaston started work on the site 18 months ago, hoping to ‘create an immersive experience for our children’.

The bunker has been brought back to life as an ‘immersive experience’ not just for the benefit of Field Road’s pupils, but other local schools and the local community.

Diane said: “As soon as I realised that there was a bunker, I wanted to make sure that was going to be restored.

“We looked at restoring it and bringing it back to life because what I wanted to do, and we have, thankfully, is create an immersive experience for our children.

“So that when they go down there, they get that sense or feeling of what it would have been like as either an evacuee or somebody in the World War, down in a bunker.

“And we want to open it to all the other local schools as well, and we also want to open it to the local community because of some of the grandparents out there that will still either reminisce about that time or know of it, even if they were young children.”

Diane, with her background in the army, has gone to every effort to recreate the experience as accurately as possible for today’s children.

She added: “We have lots of artefacts down there from uniforms to medals too. We've even got a picture of the Dambusters which has been signed. We've got diary entries, we've got ration books. We’ve even got a child's respirator from World War Two.

“If we're talking about the community, I'd like them to go down and we can serve them a cup of tea on a China cup or a mug of cocoa. So for me, it's about that immersive experience.

“For our children and also for the local other schools, but equally for our local community. Sorry, I get really passionate about it - I probably haven't even taken a breath there!”

“They can touch a typewriter, they can look at the bullet casings, they can try the uniform on. We've even got a 1940s machine gun outside.

“When you look at it, it looks like a 1940s street. You then go down the steps behind that, and that's where lies the bunker.”

Alongside the artifacts sourced online, Diane and Paul have also added a radio playing Churchill’s speeches inside, and plan on a projector to enhance the WW2 module year six pupils are about to begin.

The site will also display the Bloxwich school’s own past - a school log from the wartime headmaster.

“Him writing, saying that they were making their way to the bunker or when the school was closed because of air raids, I love it.

“For me, it's just allowing those children who may wear a poppy, but they don't really know what the importance of it was, this brings it back to life.”