Winston Churchill’s Battle of Britain Bunker was hidden from the Nazis underneath a formal garden, research has revealed.

The secret site in Uxbridge, west London, was camouflaged during the Second World War to look like part of a landscaped design from the air, avoiding enemy detection.

It was following a visit to this bunker, on Aug 16, 1940, that Churchill first uttered his famous words about the Battle of Britain: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

As it was a top-secret site housing RAF Fighter Command 11 Group, there are no known wartime photographs of how the bunker looked above ground.

However, a new study of historic aerial photographs suggests the underground control room which coordinated Britain’s defences and response to attacks from the Luftwaffe was disguised to look like part of the landscape of Hillingdon House, a nearby mansion.