A Day Out at IWM Churchill War Rooms

[Ad- gifted experience] As he gets older, Kai is getting more and more interested in history, but perhaps most specifically in areas that his schooling have touched on; WWII, the Tudors and Anglo-Saxon Britain. As such we’ve taken him along to a ringwork and bailey fortification, manor houses and museums over the years, but a great opportunity presented itself in the form of visiting the Churchill War Rooms recently, and so we headed over.

The Churchill War Rooms are a fascinating peek into World War II, with the location including a lot of the repurposed Whitehall basement that became the command centre for Churchill and his war cabinet during WWII. At the end of the labyrinth, there is also an extensive museum specifically about Winston Churchill as a person, from birth through to death. For anybody with more than a passing interest in WWII, it offers a really deep insight into how some people lived, survived and adapted during those turbulent times; and the museum does a good job of showing off Churchill as an individual rather than a war hero — it discusses his highs and lows, rather than a highlight reel.

It’s part of the Imperial War Museum network of museums, alongside IWM London, Duxford, North and the HMS Belfast, and while it lacks the scale of IWM Duxford, it is a lot more personal and benefits massively from honing in on one specific section of modern history.

Churchill War Rooms

You first enter the Churchill War Rooms from a small entryway at the foot of Clive Steps, a stone’s throw away from Downing Street; It’s actually situated right next door to the Treasury, in the heart of London. We walked past Westminister Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben on our way to it. We even took a walk around St. James’ Park while we waited for our tickets to be sorted.

When we visited there were still Covid-19 restrictions in place, which meant that you couldn’t freely weave through the tunnel network, instead it followed a set course that appeared to zig-zag through the previous ‘ideal’ layout. The main indicator of this was that the audio descriptions available were out of synch, and some of them urged you to double-back for the next section. However, this wasn’t actually too jarring and the staff – who were very helpful – explained this when they handed out the devices (which are given to every single attendee, rather than being charged at an extra cost).

It was amazing to see the preserved war rooms, as well as things like the Map Rooms or communication arrays. It’s hard to imagine that a ‘live’ map of country borders and battle fronts is something that is coordinated by moving pins across a board following dozens of phone calls, but this low-tech method is exactly how it happened. You also get a chance to look into many of the sleeping quarters and living spaces for the staff of the war rooms, and the likes of Churchill’s private detectives. Each of these spaces had its own audio recording complete with anecdotes and stories, as well as many of the personal items of the occupants, which really brought together the whole thing.

Winston Churchill Museum

At the 2/3rds point of the tour, the corridors opened up into the Winston Churchill Museum. This area was a massive, open space with almost a hundred interactive features. Unlike the War Rooms, this area had almost zero direction for one-way traffic – instead of letting you weave between the different sections. Each of these sections covered different parts of Churchill’s life, from his early political career, his admiralty and into his retirement. There was even quite a bit of information on his flipping of political parties, they really didn’t hold back.

While a lot of this was focused on the war, they didn’t shy away from some of the more negative parts of his career. A large interactive desk stretched about 25m through the hallway, it was an interactive video display that looked like a massive table covered in chronologically ordered newspapers. You could select any of them and read about that moment in history, with everything from Gallipolli through the Famines to far beyond.

Both the Museum and the War Rooms themselves were fascinating, and Kai was completely captivated to see the rooms and into the lives of the people behind the allied efforts during WWII. It’s a great place for anybody with more than a passing interest in WWII, and there’s more than enough in there to fill up a long afternoon. There’s also a nice cafè with a decent selection of refreshments.

You can find out all about the Churchill War Rooms, and book a ticket, on the Imperial War Museum website.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up to!