RAF Harpur Hill.

RAF Harpur Hill was once the biggest Ammunitions storage depot in the Europe, the site was opened in 1938 and finally closed in 1960, the Llanberis bomb store is almost identical in construction to Harpur Hill.

The site stored gas weapons and V bombs amongst other ordnance and had its own rail network to transport the ammunition and bombs to various parts of the country where it was needed.

The site also homed RAF Bomb disposal teams, in the years just before closure the place became home to the first RAF mountain rescue units.

RAF Harpur Hill covers over 550 acres and is cut out of limestone, it also has limestone quarries adjacent to the site which where also converted to store aviation fuel.

The geographical location of the site was perfect for its war time role as Buxton is in the Pennines and close to the Dark Peaks where extreme weather conditions are frequent, and fog often covers the hill tops making visibility nearly impossible but a very affective natural camouflage.

In the late 80s one of the underground storage bunkers was converted and used as a mushroom farm.

The site is currently home to the Health & Safety Executive and is the biggest test site of its type in the country.

HSE carry out explosives testing here and rail crash simulations as the site has its own tunnels, they also carry out air experiments, sirens and red flags are displayed and sounded when air testing is being carried out.

Sheffield University also have laborotories on the site and are still used, the front of the site is occupied by industrial units.

Access to the underground sections was not attempted as access is difficult to find.

We only covered around a two thirds of the site on our visit as we was pressed for time.

Whilst exploring the site we did come across various interesting finds including evidence from the joint HSE and South Wales Police investigation into the Corus Steel Works explosion of 2001 with evidence bags from Blast Furnace No.5.

Approaching the the top section of the Sheffield University labs we discovered "Avril" a Chieftan Armoured Repair And Recovery Vehicle (CARRV)

VRN No. 07FF45 which was built at ROF Leeds.

What its doing here is unkown but was an added bonus as it was open and fully operational.