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Bletchley Park
The mansion in 2017
Established
1938 (as a code-breaking centre); 1993 (as a museum)
Bletchley Park housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers– most importantly the German EnigmaLorenz cipher. The team of codebreakers included the computer pioneer Alan Turing and the "Ultra" intelligence produced at Bletchley was believed to have shortened the war by two to four years.[1] The team at Bletchley Park, which included a lot of women, developed Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946 and all information about the wartime operations was classified until the mid-1970s.
More recently, Bletchley Park has been open to the public, featuring interpretive exhibits and huts that have been rebuilt to appear as they did during their wartime operations. It receives hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.[2] The separate National Museum of Computing, which includes a working replica Bombe machine and a rebuilt Colossus computer, is housed in Block H on the site.
Postwar neglect
After the war, the codebreakers left Bletchley Park and until the 1970s there was a general secrecy about the activities in the park.[3]
Bletchley Park Trust was set up in 1991 by a group of people who recognised the site's importance,[4] as it was at risk of being sold off for housing.[5] and in February 1992, the Milton Keynes Borough Council declared most of the Park a conservation area.[6]
New Museum
The site opened to visitors in 1993, and was formally inaugurated by the Duke of Kent as Chief Patron in July 1994[7] and Tony Sale became the first director of the Bletchley Park Museums in 1994.[8]
June 2014 saw the completion of an £8 million restoration project by museum design specialist, Event Communications, which was marked by a visit from Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.[10] The Duchess' paternal grandmother, Valerie, and Valerie's twin sister, Mary (née Glassborow), both worked at Bletchley Park during the war. The twin sisters worked as Foreign Office Civilians in Hut 6, where they managed the interception of enemy and neutral diplomatic signals for decryption. Valerie married Catherine's grandfather, Captain Peter Middleton.[11][12][13] A memorial at Bletchley Park commemorates Mary and Valerie Middleton's work as code-breakers.[14]
The Bletchley Park Learning Department offers educational group visits with active learning activities for schools and universities. Visits can be booked in advance during term time, where students can engage with the history of Bletchley Park and understand its wider relevance for computer history and national security. Their workshops cover introductions to codebreaking, cyber security and the story of Enigma and Lorenz.[16]
Funding
In October 2005, American billionaire Sidney Frank donated £500,000 to Bletchley Park Trust to fund a new Science Centre dedicated to Alan Turing.[17]Simon Greenish joined as Director in 2006 to lead the fund-raising effort[18] in a post he held until 2012 when Iain Standen took over the leadership role.[19] In July 2008, a letter to The Times from more than a hundred academics condemned the neglect of the site.[20][21] In September 2008, PGP, IBM and other technology firms announced a fund-raising campaign to repair the facility.[22] On 6 November 2008 it was announced that English Heritage would donate £300,000 to help maintain the buildings at Bletchley Park, and that they were in discussions regarding the donation of a further £600,000.[23]
In October 2011, the Bletchley Park Trust received a £4.6 million Heritage Lottery Fund grant to be used "to complete the restoration of the site, and to tell its story to the highest modern standards" on the condition that £1.7 million of match funding is raised by the Bletchley Park Trust.[24][25] Just weeks later, Google contributed £550,000[26] and by June 2012 the trust had successfully raised £2.4 million to unlock the grants to restore Huts 3 and 6, as well as develop its exhibition centre in Block C.[27]
Additional income is raised by renting Block H to the National Museum of Computing, and some office space in various parts of the park to private firms.[28][29][30]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Trust expected to lose more than £2 million in 2020 and be required to cut a third of its workforce. Former MP John Leech asked Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to donate £400,000 each to secure the future of the Trust. Leech had led the successful campaign to pardon Alan Turing and implement Turing's Law.[31]
The National Museum of Computing is housed in Block H, which is rented from the Bletchley Park Trust. Its Colossus and Tunny galleries tell an important part of allied breaking of German codes during World War II. There is a working reconstruction of a Bombe and a rebuilt Colossus computer which was used on the high-level Lorenz cipher, codenamed Tunny by the British.[32][33]
The museum, which opened in 2007, is an independent voluntary organisation that is governed by its own board of trustees. Its aim is "To collect and restore computer systems particularly those developed in Britain and to enable people to explore that collection for inspiration, learning and enjoyment."[34] Through its many exhibits, the museum displays the story of computing through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s. It has a policy of having as many of the exhibits as possible in full working order.[35]
Science and Innovation Centre
This consisted of serviced office accommodation housed in Bletchley Park's Blocks A and E, and the upper floors of the Mansion. Its aim was to foster the growth and development of dynamic knowledge-based start-ups and other businesses.[36] It closed in 2021 and blocks A and E were taken into use as part of the museum.[37]
Proposed National College of Cyber Security
In April 2020 Bletchley Park Capital Partners, a private company run by Tim Reynolds, Deputy Chairman of the National Museum of Computing, announced plans to sell off the freehold to part of the site containing former Block G for commercial development. Offers of between £4 million and £6 million were reportedly being sought for the 3 acre plot, for which planning permission for employment purposes was granted in 2005.[38][39] Previously, the construction of a National College of Cyber Security for students aged from 16 to 19 years old had been envisaged on the site, to be housed in Block G after renovation with funds supplied by the Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre.[40][41][42][43]
RSGB National Radio Centre
The Radio Society of Great Britain's National Radio Centre (including a library, radio station, museum and bookshop) are in a newly constructed building close to the main Bletchley Park entrance.[44][45]
↑ Furness, H (14 May 2019). "Kate meets the codebreakers: Duchess of Cambridge tells of her sadness over her grandmother's secret Bletchley Park life". UK Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 20 May 2019. The 37-year-old opened up as she visited the estate near Milton Keynes on Tuesday to see a new exhibition celebrating the role codebreakers played in the D-Day landings almost 75 years ago....she was shown a memorial containing the name of her father's mother and great-aunt, who also worked at Bletchley.
↑ David Summer (October 2012). "RSGB opens showcase for amateur radio at Bletchley Park". QST. 96 (10). (Call Sign K1ZZ). The American Radio Relay League: 96.
↑ "Welcome". Bletchley Park. Retrieved 13 October 2018.
Bibliography
Sources
Aldrich, Richard J. (2010), GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency, HarperCollins, ISBN978-0-00-727847-3
Bennett, Ralph (1999) [1994], Behind the Battle: Intelligence in the war with Germany, 1939–1945 (New and Enlargeded.), London: Random House, ISBN978-0-7126-6521-6
Enever, Ted (1999), Britain's Best Kept Secret: Ultra's Base at Bletchley Park (3rded.), Sutton, ISBN978-0-7509-2355-2
Erskine, Ralph (2011), Breaking German Naval Enigma on Both Sides of the Atlantic in Erskine & Smith 2011, pp.165–83
Erskine, Ralph; Smith, Michael, eds. (2011), The Bletchley Park Codebreakers, Biteback Publishing Ltd, ISBN978-1-84954-078-0 Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001
Grey, Christopher (2012), Decoding Organization: Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, ISBN978-1107005457
Hill, Marion (2004), Bletchley Park People, Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, ISBN978-0-7509-3362-9
Hinsley, F. H.; Stripp, Alan, eds. (1993) [1992], Codebreakers: The inside story of Bletchley Park, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-280132-6
Kenyon, David (10 May 2019), Bletchley Park and D-Day: The Untold Story of How the Battle for Normandy Was Won, Yale University Press, ISBN978-0-300-24357-4
Lewin, Ronald (2001) [1978], Ultra Goes to War: The Secret Story, Classic Military History (Classic Penguined.), London, England: Hutchinson & Co, ISBN978-1-56649-231-7
McKay, Sinclair (2010), The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: the WWII Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There, Aurum, ISBN978-1-84513-539-3
Millward, William (1993), Life in and out of Hut 3 in Hinsley & Stripp 1993, pp.17–29
Pidgeon, Geoffrey (2003), The Secret Wireless War: The story of MI6 communications 1939–1945, Universal Publishing Solutions Online Ltd, ISBN978-1-84375-252-3
Watson, Bob (1993), Appendix: How the Bletchley Park buildings took shape in Hinsley & Stripp 1993, pp.306–10
Welchman, Gordon (1997) [1982], The Hut Six story: Breaking the Enigma codes, Cleobury Mortimer, England: M&M Baldwin, ISBN9780947712341 New edition with addendum by Welchman correcting his misapprehensions in the 1982 edition.
Price, David A. (2021). Geniuses at War; Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age. New York: Knopf. ISBN978-0-525-52154-9.
Russell-Jones, Mair (2014), My Secret Life in Hut Six: One Woman's Experiences at Bletchley Park, Lion Hudson, ISBN978-0-745-95664-0
Smith, Christopher (2014), "Operating secret machines: military women and the intelligence production line, 1939–1945", Women's History Magazine, 76: 30–36, ISSN1476-6760
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