Western Approaches Museum

Western Approaches is a wartime command bunker sitting underneath the offices of Liverpool’s commercial district, left more or less as it was on the day the war ended. This is the room the Battle of the Atlantic was run from.

The Combined Operations headquarters moved here from Plymouth after the fall of France in 1940 pushed the main North Atlantic convoy routes around the north of Ireland and left the Devon base badly placed. The new headquarters were established at Derby House on the 7th of February 1941 and given the name HMS Eaglet, because naval shore establishments were commissioned as though they were ships.

Admiral Sir Percy Noble took command ten days later and built up the escort bases at Greenock, Derry and Liverpool. Max Horton replaced him in the November of 1942 and stayed until the command shut down in the August of 1945, using the growing number of escort ships to form support groups that could peel away from a convoy and hunt a U-boat for hours at a time.

The Western Approaches Tactical Unit worked out the counter-tactics from the top floor of the Exchange Buildings across the square, staffed almost entirely by women.

The reinforced core of the bunker proved too expensive to demolish. The rest of Derby House became modern offices and the bunker simply stayed put, which is why you can now walk through the operations room, the map room, the communications rooms and the admiral’s office.

What is open to visitors is only a small part of the original complex.

Big Heritage, a non-profit social enterprise, took the site on in 2017 after years of neglect. They have opened up rooms that had been sealed and shut off for decades and restored the main operations chart during the COVID closures. There is no national funding behind it, so ticket income pays for the place.

Tours are self-guided, but you can pay extra for a guided tour and the venue is cashless.

The Basics

• Where: 1-3 Rumford Street, Exchange Flags, Liverpool, L2 8SZ, tucked in behind the Town Hall. It is genuinely hard to find, so give yourself a few minutes
• Opening hours: Daily, 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:00
• Admission: Children aged 5 to 16 are £1, Under-5s go free and adults are £16.50 – different rates are available for group bookings and personal tours – see the website
• Tickets: Valid for one re-entry within six months, and advance booking is not necessary
• Access: Stairs only, across two floors, with no step-free route through the site. Visitors who cannot manage stairs can see some of the upper-floor rooms and are not charged. The toilets are not wheelchair accessible
• Getting there: Moorfields and James Street stations are both a short walk, and Lime Street is about fifteen minutes
• Run by: Big Heritage