BLETCHLEY PARK
 

Bletchley Park is the name of a mansion, located near present-day Milton Keynes, where highly secret WW II work was done (by Alan Turing and others) to de-cipher the Nazis' Enigma Device. The breaking of this Code was instrumental in the Allies' victory and the ideas that came out this effort have led directly to our computer age. That site was chosen by the British Intelligence Services because it was equidistant between London, Oxford and Cambridge and thus brilliant minds could easily converge on that spot by rail.

I may be wrong, but I believe some of the buildings and grounds are open to the public today. Does anyone know if this is so and/or been there?

Try this website that I found on Google...
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

Voila! Thanks Intrepid! Now I'd like to know of anyone who's been there...

yup, it's open, but as of 2 years ago pretty decrepit. (but they are working on it, and actually it seemed to have more of an aura of 'old' which is missing from so many historical sites today)

I think BT owned it for a time, & now they are trying to (perhaps succeeded, it's been a while) to get national lottery approval in order to fund raise?

the house is something else. supposedly the owners were rich eccentrics (oh so rare among Brits I find) who traveled a lot and every time they saw an architectural style they came home and explained it to the local handyman who tried to oblige by building another weird wing. there are 5 styles visible from the front. I use the term style loosely.

try to read up on the code breaking AND making efforts before you go - you'll get a better flavor of the place. Leo Marks' book 'between silk and cyanide' was really good.

amazingly enough - many people who worked there lived right in town but they still kept the existence/use of the place a secret. can you see that happening today? not bloody likely.

Hi

For an article about the history of the work at BP: http://britishhistory.about.com/libr...secretwar1.htm

some family members of mine, including two young teens, went there last year
They were moderately impressed.
It is still funded and mostly run by volunteers and it's not a "slick" tourist venue, but my family thought it worth it--they are history buffs, especially WWII.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...mp;tid=1367220

This may offer further feedback, though a little out of date.

I was there last month on a day visit set up by the Friends of the Imperial War Museum. Apart from a few main room in the hall, the place is not sparkling and new-painted, but is tidy, serviceable, with good guides and labelling, and simply fascinating. What if the Poles had not handed us machines just before the war ? The shipping losses in the Atlantic were bad enough even with Enigma in our hands.

Our (excellent) group guide, a lady of a certain age, has worked there as a Wren. She thinks she was put to work there because on call-up, in the form, she wrote Hobby: Crosswords. What a way to fight a war. But we won.

[email protected]

I was there for an afternoon last summer and I wouldn't characterize Bletchley as decrepit but more like "lovingly tattered." And I say that because for all its lack of slickness, the folks who work and volunteer there are passionately devoted to the place and its history. My husband is a history buff and was delighted to discover that our tour guide had been one of the enigma operators during WWII. She ran a fascinating but tight tour ("there will be a quiz!"). My daughter, friend & I split off after 1.5 hours (we're not history fiends) but most remained for close to 3 hours.

It was a fine day and nice enough to wander the pleasant grounds after a cup of tea in the somewhat threadbare restaurant.

Last year there were full tours offered on the weekend days but somewhat limited access during the week. They were hoping to attract more volunteers to expand the M-F hours.

As said above, the trip from Euston Station to Milton Keynes was an easy one. From there, a short walk to the house and grounds.

If you want to vist a site that provides a vivid impression of the war, visit the War Rooms under Whitehall, which Churchill and the Cabinet used until May 1945. They were restored at Margaret Thatcher's direction and are evocative of the courage of the British at that time.

Thanks for the responses; it's a very interseting topic. It's amazing that the secret was so well kept during the war, also amazing that it was kept for (how many?) years AFTER the war.

It's touching that there are some still alive who lived through those perilous years.

I seem to remember reading that the Poles came upon one of these German machines and wanted to share it with the French, who declined. Thankfully it ended up at Bletchley!

The War Rooms at Whitehall are very interesting - there's also a similar exhibit at Dover Castle where they anxiously watched out over the Channel for, and awaited, the dreaded invasion.

There was an amazing program about Bletchley Park on TV. I wish I could remember if it was PBS, Discovery or A&E! Does anyone know? It's quite a story. More than a few of the men and women became great friends and a few married each other. It was hush hush for many years.

dln:

I recall a biopic some years back (5 maybe) on Alan Turing, THE genius behind the breaking of the code. It was sensitively done.

His was a tragic life; rather than enjoying the plaudits, he was cruelly tormented, having been exposed as being gay. He took his own life in 1954.

Yes, there have been some recent documentaries on the topic of "The Enigma Machine". Of course the Germans never caught on that the Allies frequently knew where their u-boat wolfpacks were in the North Atlantic.

TuckH

you will also enjoy the book Bodyguard of Lies. as Churchill said, the Truth is so precious it always must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

for example, Coventry was bombed b/c the Allies COULD NOT let on that they knew it was going to be bombed lest they give up their secret - that they were cracking the code.

fascinating book. might be hard to find? it was when I went looking 4-5 years ago...

On our first UK trip in 1978, we stayed in Charlbury at a hotel called The Bell. After a day of sightseeing in the area, we thought we'd take a little road back to the hotel......part way through we were met by a woman who stopped our car and asked us how we happened to be there. We had no clue we were anywhere of interest. She explained this was a closed area and we should have been stopped earlier and that we could head out and if stopped by anyone, we could tell them Lady ? said we were fine and to let us continue through to Charlbury. We didn't know until much later where we had been and that the big old house had such a past. Through the many years, we've seen so many documentaries on code-breaking and recognize the surrounds of the home.

karenabs - I think you are a tad confused. Bletchley Park is not near Charlbury. It is over in Buckinghamshire near Milton Keynes.

Charlbury is in Oxfordshire and the "Lady" you ran into was likely someone from the Duke of Marlborough's family. Charlrbury is on the backside of Blenheim Palace's grounds.

My curiousity is picqued, where is Bletchley Park and how can you get there(on a Sunday)?
Emily

Karenabs and Janis: The Bletchley/Ditchley Confusion

Karen was presumably walking through Ditchley Park, which borders Charlbury (which is on no-one's backside, and has been around a lot longer than Blenheim). Blenheim is criss-crossed with public rights of way, and if the Churchills ever had the temerity to tell anyone to get off "their" land, they'd be totally out of order.

Ditchley, during WW2, was used by Churchill as a country escape whenever his official country residence was so moonlit as to be a security hazard.

After WW2, it was bequeathed to the nation, and is now owned by the UK Foreign Office. It is used for "seminars". Which may be obscure meetings of experts on global issues. Or, for all anyone knows, serious debriefing of whichever former 3rd world ruler has sought asylum this week.

Whatever, they do have a habit, from time to time, of suggesting that walkers do not divert a foot from the public rights of way across the estate.

And, for the collectors of historic trivia, the curators of The Breakers in Rhode Island have a painting of a chatelaine of Ditchley, Anne Wharton (a prominent 17th century poet)by Peter Lely. They caption it "Anne of Ditchly" to confuse us all.

The estate is probably known best to all of you who've ever looked at the Gheeraerts portrait of Elizabeth 1 in the National Gallery, known to art historians as the Ditchley Portrait. Elizabeth's foot is planted on Ditchley: it's a symbol that the commissioner of the portrait - a former courtier who was cohabiting at Ditchley with one of Elizabeth's most strumpet-like former ladies in waiting - wanted to get back into the Queen's favour.

Historians cannot agree as to whether Elizabeth was miffed at the courtier's immorality, or at the fact that the immorality did not include her.

flanner...what an amusing post!

You touch on another topic of interest to me - that of the "public rights of way", few of which do we have here in the US. As a matter of fact, when we've gone off on lengthy hikes in the UK, we've used the public footpaths that are part of a vast network of rights-of-way across private lands. What a national treasure this is! Does it date back to 1215 and the Magna Carta?

jimily: For the info that you seek, check out the website that Intrepid posted above. It's all there.

flanneruk - you may be right. But karenabs was driving, not walking. I know Ditchley is right on the edge of Charlbury. But I had never found any roads I would mistake for public ones through Ditchley. There are several roads through Blenheim and since it is also close to Charlbury I just assumed they had gotten off on one of those.

In any case we definitely agree - it wasn't Bletchley.

TuckH

You're absolutely right. Our footpaths are right up there with rural parish churches, suburban gardens and Radio 4 as the things the guidebooks keep mercifully quiet about.

Oddly, nothing to do with Magna Carta.

My understanding is this: after the Conquest, just about all England was ultimately Crown land, though the population had complex rights of access and use. Practicaly everywhere had universal right of access.
Over the next 900 years, monarchs granted most of that land to private individuals (places near Ditchley were privatised only in the mid-19th century). Some public rights - like access - remained: some State rights - like oil drilling - were never assigned to the owners.

In 1947, this was finally codified. Public access rights were listed, and legally defined: landowners not only have to permit access across defined routes, but must maintain safe access points (hence the myriad kinds of stile). Why do - and did - landowners tolerate this?

Well, for the same reason that we have more major works of art in private ownership than anywhere else in Europe. We avoided revolution partly because landowners always just did enough to keep the rest of the country at bay. The great houses haven't been sacked, as they were in France, because the toffs kept throwing morsels to us peasants. Footpath access was one of them.

Janis:
There is a road. Drive along the A44 from Woodstock to Enstone. Five miles after Woodstock, there's a sign "Ditchley". Follow it southbound, and, after a "no entry" sign, it joins Ditchley Road, which goes north from Charlbury.
These days, the "don't come in" sign is very visible. But there's no locked gate, though doubtless the area is so CCTV'd, any car passing the signs would be on the wrong end of a Cruise missile before you could say "Weapons of Mas Destruction"

flanner, thanks for your info and speaking of WMD, try this:

Go to GOOGLE and search for WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and click on "I'm Feeling Lucky" and see what comes up!

Thanks - I've been on the A44 many times (and the Charlbury to Enstone road a lot too since my ex's favorite garage was in Charlbury). There are several roads in there - Stonesfield, Spelsbury, I think Finstock is in that same general triangle - but as I remember, the KEEP OUT notices around Ditchley were pretty prominent.

But it has been many years since I lived there - this has sure brought back memories.

A British film called "Enigma" was released in the US last year, might be out on DVD or video
Aside from some fictional characters and an added romance, the depiction of the work at Bletchley was very interesting.

The film about Alan Turing from a few years ago was called "Breaking the Code", based on a West End and Broadway play. Derek Jacobi did the play and the film.

Maybe I missed something, but didn't anyone else notice that the first response to a question about Bletchley Park was by ... uh ... a man called Intrepid?

to the to

Many thanks to you all that recognized that we were on the grounds of Ditchley, not Bletchley. It was just on their private road, as I remember...obviously, my mind is gone and I can't remember the details, but all your info. on Bletchley is interesting.

BBC-i Battle of the Atlantic
Web site to accompany a new 3 part BBC series about the battle in the Atlantic.

Enigma Film Site
The official web site for the film based on the Richard Harris novel. The site includes photographs from the film, interviews, competitions, merchandise and downloads.

Beaumanor
This page commemorates the civilian officers who served at Beaumanor between 1945 and 1970. The page includes a link to a Smartgroup which has been set up to put ex civilian staff of Beaumanor in touch with each other.

Camp X
Website for Camp X, where 'agents' trained before being parachuted into Nazi occupied territory to not only lead the resistance movement, but to provide valuable information to invading Allied Armies.

Camp - X Official Site Canada's on-line Spy Museum!

Channel 4
makers of the television documentary about Bletchley Park, Station X

Fleet Air Arm Archive


GCHQ
this site contains lots of information about GCHQ (the organisation previously called GC & CS which was based at Bletchley Park before moving to Cheltenham)

Maths at Work
Visit the web site for further information about the Maths @ Work initiative and the Teacher's Pack.

The Polish Festival is an annual event, organised by Federation of Poles, that takes place at Bletchley Park. It's aim is to celebrate Polish life, in particular honouring the Poles who were instrumental in the breaking of the Enigma Code.

Railtrack
the company responsible for the UK rail network and a good place obtain times and routes for travelling to and from Bletchley Park

Royal British Legion Wireless Intercept (Y) Services web page
the branch of the British Legion dedicated to service people from the Y services

The Alan Turing Home Page
lots of information about the inventor of the Bombe, plus many links to related internet sites

The Enigma Machine
this page contains an excellent java applet simulation of an Enigma machine
People who enjoyed this correspondence might like to go to www.bletchleypark.org.uk/, then Links, where they can read these.
The Imperial War Museum

This site contains lots of information about exhibits, with many online exhibits as well.

The National Security Agency
the American government agency responsible for cryptography, including the National Cryptologic Museum

The Turing Bombe Rebuild Project
a site documenting the rebuild project, including details of the progress made and lots of other information about the Bombe

The Winston Churchill Home Page
lots of stories and information about the former British Prime Minister

Virtual Milton Keynes
Information and local news for the Milton Keynes area

Ben I didn't even realise GCHQ was at Bletchley before moving to Cheltenham! I had to do some training for the staff there some years ago (boy was that a security nightmare getting signed in etc) and the place was dismal looking. It must have been hard for those who had worked in Bletchley to move! Or maybe they were happy to go to more modern premises...

My last message lost its opening, where I meant to say that the page www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ leads to a links page, and this gives immediate links to all the pages I listed. Sorry.

Ben Haines

BEN! You're terrific, a vast resource and a credit to this board. I'm very grateful to you. TUCK