Volunteers used a digger to get into a searchlight bunker at L'Ancresse, not accessed since the late 1940s.

Festung Guernsey traditionally select a sealed up bunker to unearth early in the New Year and volunteer Ben Drew says they chose a searchlight shelter at L'Ancresse:

"This was a Type 606 searchlight bunker. This is exactly the same as the Shell Shrine at Fort Hommet, so we knew the layout, we just didn't know what was in here."

Ben says it did not take long for the hired digger to lift the boulders and earth out of the entrance, to allow people to slide into the bunker below:

"It took about half an hour. We knew the layout so we knew where the doors were, so you can dig straight down. It depends on the sort of back fill you have, and these were large boulders."

The bunker has been sealed up since the late 1940s or early 50s. Ben says there was nothing of value to the preservation group inside, but a survey has been carried out:

"The point of the exercise was to see if there was anything we could recover for restoration and to record it so we used our 3D scanning machine and 3D scanned the whole of the bunker."

"There were a number of different items on the floor, but all post war rubbish and there was quite a lot of graffiti on the walls."

Ben Drew from Festung Guernsey.

Festung Guernsey is a volunteer group that works to catalogue the island's World War 2 German defences and preserve the best examples of each type.