Booking now open for our open days
We are open for tours and much more on the first Sunday of each month. At each of our community open mornings you can:
- Explore our unique underground air raid shelter with our friendly volunteer guides (tickets required).
- Browse the new Take Shelter museum displays and chat to our veterans about their wartime experiences
- Have a tasty snack and hot drink at Mrs Button’s Tea Room
- Take home a souvenir from our Take Shelter gift shop
Our next Open Day is:
Just click on the link to book your tickets.
About our new entrance
Up until the autumn of 2022 access into the shelter has only been possible via a small hatch and metal ladder. The Take Shelter team have been fundraising for the last 5 years to build a new more accessible entrance to the shelter. We are thrilled to announce that all our hard work has paid off and, with the support of Downs Junior School and Brighton & Hove City Council, the new entrance opened in September 2022. We are hoping that with our new set of steps and handrail we will be able to share the shelter with a wider cross-section of the community.
What to expect during your air raid shelter tour:
- find out more about the original shelter and find out how they were built
- see films of our veterans and hear what it was like to be a child in wartime Brighton
- browse displays of rare photographs from Brighton Museum and The Keep
- watch archive footage from wartime Brighton from Screen Archive South East
- enjoy our recreated scenes of an Anderson shelter, wartime kitchen and bedroom
- experience what it would have been like to be in the shelter during a bombing raid in our air raid simulation
- see original wartime artefacts in our shelter displays
While you are at Take Shelter, why don’t you also…
Try your hand at our vintage games (May dates only)
Roll up, roll up! As part of our vintage fair there will be a range of games to have a go at. Will you win by luck or by skill? Stalls will be open from 12noon each day.
Take home a Take Shelter souvenir
No visit would be complete without a Take Shelter souvenir from our well stocked gift shop. Open from 11am.
Meet our wartime veterans
We are incredibly lucky to have a small number of veterans involved with the project. Come and meet Alan, Ann or David in the Take Shelter Museum and hear their stories first hand.
Tap your toes to wartime tunes
The air will be filled with vintage sounds provided by DJ Colin Tenn from Brighton Jive. Whether you sit and enjoy the tunes, dance across the floor or take your first steps in one of our taster lessons, Colin will create the perfect musical Home Front atmosphere.