Barnton Quarry has had several lives – first it was a stone quarry of course, then in WWII it was the operations room for the Turnhouse sector of Fighter Command. After the war it was unused for a few years, then in 1952 a whole second bunker was built underground to turn it into a R4 ROTOR bunker – ROTOR was a radar early warning system. Abandoned again, it became a Regional Seat of Government (RSG) in the 1960s, where the Scottish government could hide in the event of nuclear war – a BBC studio was built where encouraging messages could be broadcast to the surviving population.
