How Liverpool’s unique wartime attraction Western Approaches is gearing up for summer

It’s one of the most important wartime HQs still in existence and it’s right here in Liverpool city centre.

Western Approaches might once have been a secret bunker, but it now regularly ranks in the city’s top five visitor attractions.

With summer holidays here, and cruise ships already arriving almost daily, the former intelligence centre for the Battle of the Atlantic is planning for a busy few months.

There’ll be 1940s bake demos and talks showing how home cooks made the best of very few ingredients during rationing, an insight into the vital part young Liverpool women in the Wrens played in the war, nostalgic singalong sessions and a focus on vintage fashions from the era.

All the events on dates through July and August are free with entry tickets and tour guide Cameron McLure-Murray says there’s something fascinating for all ages, appealing to visitors from Liverpool and worldwide:

“Our cookery and fashion expert Kay Gibson will be giving talks each week on how rationing affected everything from the food families ate to what they wore,” he says. “Kay is a great cook so she makes the recipes as they did in the 1940s with the same ingredients to show how they compare to the food we have now.

“New for this summer she’ll also be running Ration and Fashion events, looking at 1940s clothing, hair and make-up and how women were very resourceful in maintaining their sense of fashion and glamour despite the situation, making do but always looking the best they could. 

“We have regular singalongs with our wartime singer Emily who’s a very talented musician and recently starred in the Ken Dodd musical, a kids trail to get children hands-on and involved, and our expert Lauren Shacklady hosts talks every week about the Wrens.”

Western Approaches has a dedicated Wrens’ museum, opened last year by Princess Anne, so visitors can learn all about their hugely important role. 

Lauren said:

“In our building we were around 80% staffed by young women aged 18 to 21, and being such an influential building in the Battle of The Atlantic and the war overall meant a lot of the success rested on the Wrens’ shoulders. 

“They were crucial to Liverpool and the war effort and that’s something which can be underestimated. A lot of these young women came straight from school or from retail jobs and had to learn on the job. Western Approaches plotted and commanded the entirety of the Battle of The Atlantic so these young women were saving lives on a daily basis.”

“The youngest you could be to join the Wrens was 17-and-a-half and a lot of girls chose the Wrens over any other women’s service because it was seen as the most glamorous. They were thrown straight into it and with most of the men away fighting it was down to those women to run almost everything from a land perspective so it’s interesting to see all the different roles they would have performed.”

Cameron says summer is always a busy time for Western Approaches, with Liverpool visitors discovering more about their own city and tourists arriving from around the UK and abroad:

“We do get a lot of American and Canadian visitors coming in on the cruise ships and this is the perfect place for them because we were so heavily linked with the US and Canada during the war so it’s exploring the story they know but from the other side,” he says. 

“Western Approaches is very much a one-of-a-kind piece of history, especially if you consider it was left untouched after the war for well over 40 years. During the war obviously this was an underground top secret bunker and it can still be a surprise for people, including those who live in Liverpool – we get people in on a daily basis who’ve walked past us for years and never knew it was here so we enjoy helping them discover it.”

Find more information on the Western Approaches website.

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