Ryan and I had a day off, so we took a trip out to Milton Keynes to visit Bletchley Park, a stately home that was a top secret location during WW2, the home of the codebreakers who cracked the German’s Enigma code, and helped the Allies win the war. What went on at Bletchley Park was so secret that everyone employed there had to sign the official secrets act when they first walked through the gate. It wasn’t until wartime documents were declassified in the 1970s that the truth started to emerge, and people were allowed to talk about what went on there.
Much of that work was carried out in ‘huts’ – essentially large pre-fab buildings – which were allowed to deteriorate after the war. But Bletchley Park has been turned into a museum, and the buildings are gradually being restored, and the surviving employees are being encouraged to tell their stories, so they are preserved for the nation.
It’s a few years since Ryan and I last visited, and in the meantime they’ve built a lovely new visitor centre, with a cafe (good cake!) and shop, and multimedia displays that offer a glimpse into life at Bletchley. Even driving in, it’s amazing to think that – during WW2 – Bletchley would have been quite a remote location. Now it’s very urban, but Milton Keynes wasn’t built until the 1960s.
Bletchley Park is a wonderful glimpse into the material history of the 1940s – what life would have looked like, what people wore, the tools they had at their disposal. This is Alan Turing’s office in Hut 8. He is (rightfully) the most famous codebreaker, although he was part of a very large team of clever and dedicated men and women. Alan Turing is also considered to be the father of modern computing, as he developed complicated machines to crack codes –
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