RAF Bempton bunker in Yorkshire, UK

Leeds Metropolitan University graduate Charlotte Wilson was awarded Best in Show at London graduate show Free Range this year for her proposal to convert a bunker into a museum. The existing RAF Bempton bunker in Yorkshire, UK is built into a cliff-side and would be be transformed into a museum celebrating the role of women during war. The bunker would be dug out in areas to reveal its three metre-thick walls and create a series of courtyards open to the air. A glazed roof over one section would have water flowing over it and down a wall etched with the names of pivotal women from past wars. Part of the bunker would protrude out of the cliff to create a viewing platform over the sea.



“Situated within a unique cliff side location in Bempton lies the RAF Bempton bunker. Disintegrating and of great historical interest, it is proposed the site will be sensitively renovated and reclaimed.
‘Women . War . Peace’ will be a new and exciting war museum with the pure focus of Women and War. Journeying through the exhibition will illustrate the compassion, realism, horrors and bravery seen and felt through the eyes of women during war time, both on the front-line and behind the scenes. This museum interrogates the creativity of learning through emotional and experiential spaces and details.


The bunker accommodates four main stages, Past, Present, Reflection and Remembrance; This experience will house the stories of Women from 1914 to 2000 through interactive stations, silo spaces and archived resources with the experience being of an intimate nature. At the heart of the exhibition is an interactive time line structure which contains an immersive eerie environment within it’s walls reminding the visitor of ‘absence’. This structure is impertive as a collective point and a place to delve deeper into the information.