SRHQ 62 (later becoming RGHQ 6.2) was built in the late 1960s within the two-storey concrete basement of Crown Buildings, Alencon Link Basingstoke. It is of similar construction to two other SRHQ’s of the era, Sovereign House at Hertford and Duke’s House at Southport. It was badly built and always suffered from water ingress.
After closure in 1993 the basement was used by the Civil Service who occupied the rest of the building. The site was offered for sale in 1997 for £2.5M and there were plans to convert Crown Buildings into a residential hotel and restaurant with a night club or health and fitness centre occupying the the basement.
A night club opened in the bunker in 1998 but this was short lived and demolition of the site started in 2001, by July of that year only the shell of the basement remained in place. Plans for the site have now changed. The £40m redevelopment scheme will transform the site into ‘Crown Heights’ consisting of two14 storey blocks of luxury apartments facing each other across a landscaped courtyard. The development also includes retail and restaurant amenities and a health and fitness centre and swimming pool in the shell of the former bunker which has been retained.
The developers, Barratt Southern, hope to release the first apartments in early 2003 with construction completed by the end of that year. Thirty of the apartments are allocated for shared ownership or rental by local people and another 25 will be exclusively for occupation by the ctive elderly.
