GPO Tunnel Access Building (Glasgow)

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This mysterious little building has nothing to do with the Buchanan Galleries. In fact it is the top of an access shaft for a network of tunnels built by the GPO that carry the city's sub-surface telephone cables. The tunnel itself runs the entire length of Bath Street and Cathedral Street, and terminates at the telephone exchanges at Bothwell Street - see the tags for Telephone House and Dial House, and the Royal Infirmary at its eastern end. Branches are known to extend south to the old GPO headquarters on George Square, one further along runs north to the former telephone exchange/post office building on Renfrew Street. There are unsubstantiated claims that a further branch comes off the tunnel and goes south from Taylor Street towards Marland House (now the Graham Hills Building of Strathclyde University) - which is another former GPO structure.

This is why you often see BT vans parked next to it. Still shrouded in secrecy, urban legend has it that the tunnels were part funded by NATO during the 1960s paranoia surrounding nuclear war, in that the city's communications would survive a bomb blast - since similar tunnel networks were also known to have been built in Manchester, Birmingham and London.