The fortifications would hardly have been out of place at a super-secret Cold War bunker or on a James Bond film set.

The blockhouses are surrounded by 16ft-high fences topped by razor wire and cameras zoom in on anybody who touches the outer trip wires.

Drivers must negotiate massive electronically-controlled steel gates to get inside.

As the autumn mist rises across the river valley, the landscape almost becomes something out of a John Le Carre novel.

But this is not a frozen mid-European wasteland but lush West Sussex.

And the fortifications were never designed for nuclear brinkmanship but to keep animal rights protesters out.

Shamrock Farm, where monkeys were held before being sent to laboratories in Britain and Europe for experimentation, was notorious as the scene of protests in the Nineties.

Animal rights activists regularly held large demos at the site in Small Dole, near Henfield, and there were clashes with police as demands for its closure became more bitter.

When the farm was finally closed in 2000, the monkeys were moved out but the security apparatus remained.

And local entrepreneur Mark Fisher is making the most of it. He is marketing the renovated farm as one of the most secure business locations in the south of England.

Mr Fisher, son of the Buxted chickens tycoon Sir Anthony Fisher, bought the site for an undisclosed sum shortly after the farm's closure was announced.

The high security part of the site has been renovated and is now available for rent to any company that needs a secure base.

Spokesman Giles Fisher said: "It looks like a fortress with these 16ft fences with razor wire on top.

"It could be ideal for a data centre, it could be for an insurance company, it could be for anybody who needs 4,5000sqft in West

Sussex, which is a bit out of the way. People would think they were sitting on bullion in there.

"At the base of the fence there is a small wire that runs a foot above the ground that goes all the way around the perimeter and that is touch sensitive.

"If you touch it, the CCTV zooms in on that."

Having an isolated secure centre has become a must-have for many firms which cannot afford to lose computer records.

Mr Fisher said it took a year to tidy the site up. One of the surviving buildings inside the compound was refurbished and another one built.

He said: "There was a terrible odour and we don't know what went on there. If the pro-animal lobby is to be believed, then some quite nasty things happened."

The old Shamrock Farm site is about 40,000sqft in all. Part of the site, including 6,000sqft of office and warehouse space, is already used by furniture maker Dragons.

Dragons, which moved in last year, has workshops and studios for its handmade and hand-painted children's furniture, as well as offices at the site.

The high security part of the area occupies about 4,500sqft of office space and is where the monkeys were once kept.

Secrecy surrounded what went on at Shamrock Farm almost from the moment it opened in 1954.

The farm was used to house up to 40 animals at a time, on their way from breeding centres in Asia to laboratories in Europe.

Protests became commonplace in the final few years, which included vigils, marches and some violent incidents.

Some of the 15 or so staff claimed they had been subjected to intimidation and there was an arson attack on the director's home in Worthing.

Former keeper at London Zoo Terry Hill secretly filmed the animals when he got a job at the site, which caused a storm when it was broadcast on ITV's World In Action in 1992.

The resulting furore resulted in the then manager receiving 74 summonses for allegations of causing unnecessary animal suffering, although the case failed on a point of law.

Sue Baumgardt, of the Save the Shamrock Monkeys Campaign, said the demonstrations were part of a national movement, given fresh impetus by the protests against live animal exports at Shoreham harbour.

Ms Baumgardt, from Hove, said the animal rights movement wanted Shamrock Farm's new use to be peaceful, and efforts to stop animal experiments would go on elsewhere.

She said: "Shamrock Farm was part of a national campaign and it was a huge moral victory."

Thursday October 02, 2003