MANY thanks to everyone who has been in touch about Royal Observer Corps bunkers – perhaps we should pull all the information together into a longer article. The bunker that sparked our interest was sunk in 1965 next to the River Swale at Grinton. It is still there, although locked and without access, and Nick Catford photographed it in 1999. He points out that it was known as Reeth rather than Grinton.

John Calvert of Hutton Rudby remembers that when the bunkers were installed in the Sixties, local people were not told a nuclear warning hide-out was being built – that might have panicked the population.

“I was a young lad and remember them being built,” he says. “It was put out that water storage tanks were being built.”

Was no one suspicious that 1,563 “water storage tanks” were suddenly built across the country?

This week, we’re looking at Kirkgate in Ripon on a misty November day in 1960. In the shadow of the cathedral are a couple of Morris Minors and what appears to be a soft-topped van. Can anyone say what make of soft-topped van it might be? Emails to chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk, please.