Excavations on the Channel Island of Alderney have revealed a Nazi bunker built within the ruins of the Nunnery, one of the most well-preserved Roman forts in the British Isles, reports BBC News.
German soldiers created the shelter during the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Normandy, France. Spanning June 1940 to May 1945, the occupation represented Germany’s only successful seizure of British territory during World War II.
Archaeologist Jason Monaghan tells BBC News that Nazi troops placed the newly unearthed fortification “exactly inside” the Nunnery’s ten-foot-thick walls. Volunteers from Dig Alderney, a charity organization that supports archaeological research on the island, aided this summer’s excavations.
“[We found a] whole succession of buildings, drains and mystery walls intersecting each other,” Monaghan says, adding that the team has “just come across three floors all on top of each other and [is] trying to disentangle what eras they come from.”
