PREMIUM Main image: Tower House in the days when it was known as ‘The War Office’. Top left: John Powell. Bottom left: the blocked Fishergate House entrance to the ‘secret tunnel’ STORIES about a 'secret military tunnel' beneath Fishergate are true after all - The Press has spoken to a man who has been there. In 1959, John Powell was a young civil service clerk straight out of Nunthorpe School who had just started his first job as a civilian clerical officer at the army's Northern Command HQ on Fishergate. It was an important building - the headquarters of Army operations for the north of England. Now the Tower House business centre it was, back in the day, known to York people simply as 'The War Office'.