Bletchley Park
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Toys World War II
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← Links Crypto TNMOC Enigma → Bombe → Colossus →
World War II codebreaking centre
Bletchley Park, commonly abbreviated BP, is an estate in the town of
Bletchley, Milton Keynes (UK).
During WWII, it was the UK's main codebreaking centre.
The codes and ciphers of many countries were broken
here, such as traffic from the German Enigma,
the Siemens T-52 Geheimschreiber
and the Lorenz SZ-40/42.
It's the place where brilliant people like
Dylwyn Knox,
Alan Turing,
Gordon Welchman,
and about 12,000 others helped shortening the war by several years [1].
The map below gives a good impression of the situation at Blechley Park today. Most of the wartime buildings and huts are open to the public and are home to interesting exhibitions related to codebreaking. Note that The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) — located in the top left corner and well worth a visit — is at the same site, but has its own entrance and admission fee.
In the years following WWII, the layout of the Bletchley Park site has changed somewhat. Furthermore, part of the grounds have been sold for housing development, and the location of the main entrance was moved from Wilton Avenue to Sherwood Drive, accross the street from the Bletchley railway station. The map above shows the layout of the Bletchley Park site in 2021. Click the map for a closer look, or download it as a PDF here.
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The National Museum of Computing
Probably one of the largest collections of computers in the world,
is on display in H-Block — one of the former war-time buildings.
The museum shows the full history of computing and many of the machines
can actually be operated. You will
certainly recognise some old friends here.
Note that TNMOC is a separate entity that is not linked to the
Bletchley Park Trust in any way.
It is also the home to the Colossus Rebuild,
the Bombe Rebuild
and the Heath Robinson Rebuild.
The name Bletchley Park dates back to 1877, when Samuel Lipscomb Seckham purchased the estate and built a farm house. Six years later, on 4 June 1883, it was bought by Sir Herbert Samuel Leon (1850-1926) who was a financier and Liberal MP. He expanded Seckham's farm house with a mixture of architectural styles into what is now known as The Mansion [1].
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The image on the right shows the mansion around 1908. It was taken from
a Kingsway Real Photo postcard that was date-stamped 8 DEC 1908, which
means that the photograph must be older than that. At that time, the estate
was still owned by Sir Herbert Leon and his wife Fanny.
After Fanny died in 1937, the site was sold in 1938 to a builder, and plans were made for demolition of the mansion. However, before the site with its typical mansion was destroyed, it was bought by Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, then Director of Naval Intelligence and head of MI6. |
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In order to disguise the true identity of the park, the first government
visitors were announced as Captain Ridley's shooting party.
The Government Code and Cypher School
(GC&CS) officially moved to Bletchley
Park (BP) on 15 August 1939, when the first wave of code-breakers arrived.
The rest is history. During the war, some 12,000 people worked at BP, 80%
of whom were women. They were sworn to secrecy and it wasn't until Admiral
Frederick Wintherbotham's
book The Ultra Secret came out in 1974,
that some of them started talking about their war-time work at BP.
By 1991 the estate was largely abandonned and plans were afoot for demolition
of all buildings. On 10 February 1992 however, most of the park was declared
a conservation area by the the Milton Keynes Borough Council. Three days later
the Bletchley Park Trust was established, with the intention to turn the estate
into a museum. This was largely the result of an active campaign by
Tony Sale and a group of interested people.
Finally, in 1993, the museum opened to visitors.
Initially the museum was open to the public every other weekend and the
facilities at the park were limited. There was virtually no carpet and the
roofs of some of the huts were leaking. But it told the fascinating story
of the codebreakers extremely well. Today, Bletchley Park is turned into a modern
attactive museum with all facilities that you can think of.
And it is open every day.
Bletchley Park was considered a convenient location, as it was within
walking distance from the Bletchley railway station, right at the junction
of the railway lines between Oxford and Cambridge (the Varsity Line) and
the line from London to the north. As we now know, the universities of
Oxford and Cambridge would supply a significant number of code-breakers
during the war.
After the war, the park had various owners and remained in use for several
purposes. It was used, for example, by the
General Post Office (GPO),
later British Telecom (BT), Property Advisors to the Civil Estate (PACE) and the
Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), the post-war successor to GC&CS).
The latter closed its training facilities at Bletchley Park in 1987.
In the past, BP hosted a variety of other museums and collections,
including the Churchill Collection, the Diplomatic Wireless Service (DWS),
the Milton Keynes Model Railway Society, the Toys and Memorabilia Collection
and the re-enactment group 65th Nachrichten Abteilung.
Following a series of reorganisations at the museum, and refurbishment
of several wartime huts, these collections have been discontinued, whilst
the huts have become part of the Bletchley Park Museum.
Visit the Bletchley Park website for the latest information.
Below is a list of former exhibitions, all of which are discontinued.
Retrieved March 2008.
Website by the first curator of Bletchley Park.
Website, showing the progress and the various stages of the project.