Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

Really fun fact about that building. When it was built it was a “list X” facility for UK national security which meant that although it was a massive building in the middle of Fitzrovia and visible virtually anywhere in London, it didn’t appear on maps and the government would officially deny its existence.

View on HN

Another fun fact - it had a rotating restaurant on the 34th floor called The Top of the Tower, which was operated by Butlins, and made one revolution every 23 minutes, but was closed in 1971 following a bombing[0]. Apparently there was talk of reopening the restaurant for the London Olympics in 2012 (not clear whether it would have rotated or not) but this didn't happen. Will be interesting to see if the hotel gets the rotating restaurant working again after all this time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Tower

It would be great if it re-opened, they seem to be going out of fashion. The UK had three and now has zero!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolving_restaurants

Great list, but it seems it could be missing some entries.

The Hyatt Regency in downtown SF had a rotating restaurant (at one point called The Equinox?), but it no longer rotates and is no longer open to the public. It bled too much cash as people would go in and nurse a drink to get the full 360 view.

I had the privilege of attending an event in there while it was rotating a few years back. A real bucket list tick-off.

Fun fact #3

The Post Office Tower, as it was once called, was actually rebuilt after having been destroyed by a giant kitten in the early 1970s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ78rhjthQY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitten_Kong

A Butlins restaurant? Did you have to sing a song and get your meal served in a tent?

I once went to that restaurant in 2001 as a 12 year old kid who was invited to speak at a children's charity event held there.

It was a cool day out with a teacher from my school and couple of kids from a few years above. Afterwards, they took us on the London Eye as well, which was also pretty great.

Not the sort of thing that usually happens to kids in a state school in Yorkshire! I think I still have a "certificate" somewhere to say that I went to the top of the BT tower!

Nitpick, but "List X" means somewhere that holds classified material, not somewhere that doesn't appear on maps. In fact for many List X sites it would surely be a dead giveaway if there was a gap on maps where it ought to be!

According to Wikipedia and other sources [1], the BT tower was on maps (at least OS maps) anyway.

[1] https://londonist.com/london/history/a-brief-history-of-the-...

> In fact for many List X sites it would surely be a dead giveaway if there was a gap on maps where it ought to be!

Yep.

and for many years Soviet agents could easily find classified sites simply by looking for gaps on OS maps ( true story )

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2185107/a-very-brit...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06b36q3

( I worked in mapping for decades and have some early OS maps with defence sites left blank )

I know an area that was just white space for most of the 19th, so it wasn't just to fool the Soviets, it was to fool the French too. Didn't get properly fixed until the 1933 map.

A big strip of empty paper surrounded by carefully shaded fields definitely stands out. It makes me wonder if the mapmakers could just about handle leaving data out, but couldn't countenance putting fake data in. Interestingly, the earliest OS 6" map has that area shaded as marsh, so at some point someone made a choice to leave it blank instead.

There's a fort nearby that's back by 1911, and disappears again for 1938. Guess it wasn't as obsolete as they thought it was.

Just for fun: the most boring grid square on current OS maps https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/81429

Definitely a black ops site, and don't let the photo convince you otherwise.

More seriously, as soon as satellite imagery or even to a lesser extent aerial photography or agents driving around with cameras were a thing, putting the secure site in with a really boring symbol like a landfill site or description like Ind Est would have been a much better disguise.

E.g. Menwith Hill

Yeah - I have an OS map that shows Longcross railway station apparently serving … empty countryside, but actually a large army R&D establishment (closed, now a film studio).

Another fun fact - the orignal Goodies episode Kitten Kong featuring Twinkle the kitten taking down the BT | Post Office Tower is presumed lost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb59dEHRt5Q

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitten_Kong

At least there is still a very close edit extant.

"And no, it wasn’t a state secret until 1993 — otherwise it wouldn’t be in the map from the 1983 A-Z London."

I think the article has been updated. Or perhaps you mean further back in time?

It also, IIRC has a special exemption in which unlike almost all buildings its elevators are for use in fires. In a typical building the notices tell you emphatically you should not use elevators if there's a fire, you should all use the stairs which are rated to handle the entire population of the building leaving in a timely fashion. But (if I'm thinking of the right tower) the BT Tower was specified so that the only effective way to evacuate the building during a fire is with elevators, for which purpose those elevators are rated differently.

Yeah, I remember watching a documentary on it about 10 or so years ago, and even then they said it wasn’t signposted from anywhere and it was weirdly hard to find at street level.

It's not hard to find at street level, but the base is a fairly non-descript office building, so you might walk around it before it becomes obvious. There are signs. Mostly to tell you there is no access for the public.

Rough, try getting directions to your hotel and nobody can tell you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com