Bletchley Park was one of Britain’s best-kept secrets until the 1980s, when the history of this second world war codebreaking centre started to emerge.
The secret is now blown wide open, as shown by the recent release of a blockbuster film, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which tells the story of Bletchley’s most famous figure, the mathematician and father of computing Alan Turing.
The recent completion of the four-year restoration of Bletchley Park, a Victorian country house close to Milton Keynes, has also played a big part in raising the profile of the centre, where the work its staff did on breaking the Germans’ codes and cyphers, including the Enigma and Lorenz machines, is said to have shortened the war by two years. At one point, about 10,000 people were believed to have been employed at the centre.
Bletchley Park, which was saved from developers’ bulldozers in 1992 by a group of local historians, has been challenging to restore. It is a large site and features lots of different buildings, some of them tricky to conserve as they were only ever meant to be temporary structures.
Telling the story of Bletchley Park is further complicated by the fact that many of its buildings have been demolished.
Communicating calculations
And while there is no doubt that the story of second world war codebreaking is fascinating, it is also complex. The maths behind the codebreaking, for example, can be difficult to understand and communicating this to multiple audiences is far from straightforward.
A major part of the redevelopment was the restoration of Block C, which houses the main entrance, a cafe and the introductory exhibition. It is here that the museum conveys its key messages: it’s an important story, it’s a secret story and it happened at Bletchley Park.
Many of those who came to work at Bletchley Park arrived at the nearby train station, highlighted by some recreated train doors and railway sounds. There is 1940s music and a photo of the man associated with all things British during the second world war: prime minister Winston Churchill.
A short film emphasises the importance of Bletchley Park to the British war effort by showing its impact on events such as the Battle of Britain and D-Day. It also mentions how the first electronic computer, known as Colossus, was developed at the site.
But Bletchley Park’s exhibition designers are not just trying to convey information about technology and important wartime events – they also want to shed light on the role of Turing and some of the others who worked at the centre. Quotes from former staff, labelled “in their own words” are dotted about the displays.
“Anybody admitted to Bletchley Park during the war was allowed into the most enormous secret,” says captain Arthur Maddocks from the Intelligence Corps, further emphasising one of the museum’s main themes.
The second part of the introductory exhibition focuses on the central business of Bletchley Park: codebreaking, which it breaks down into different stages to make the process more digestible for visitors. The explanatory graphic panels are supported by objects in cases and some well thought out computer interactives.
Visitors leave the introductory exhibition armed with the wartime context that Bletchley Park was operating in and some background on the codebreakers and their activities. This prepares them to discover the rest of the site. A free multimedia guide is included in the admission price, which is £15 for adults.
The guide features great accounts by former staff of what it was like to work at the centre. “Some of the people who worked at Bletchley Park were very odd,” one female interviewee says.
“I suppose so many of them were on the border of genius. They tended to be untidy and some of them weren’t particularly clean because I think their minds were on other things.”
Reconstructions
A major focus of the redevelopment has been the restoration and interpretation of the derelict huts where those involved in codebreaking carried out their work. The interpretation in the huts is not designed to provide lots of specific information about codebreaking and the war, it’s more to convey an impression of the atmosphere at Bletchley Park.
In Huts 3 and 6, projected images, sound and reconstructed interiors allow visitors to get a feel for what it was like to work at the centre. The approach, which other museums have used, is to give the impression that the inhabitants have just left the spaces – coats hang on chairs, paperwork is littered about and you overhear snippets of conversation.
Hut 11 is also very atmospheric and features projections with two actors playing members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service who are working on the Bombe, a machine devised by Turing and his colleague Gordon Welchman to speed up the breaking of the Enigma code.
In Hut 8, visitors encounter more interactives that help explain how codes and cyphers were broken. What is interesting about these is that they really get you thinking about topics such as logic and probability, and some of the maths problems presented in them are quite hard.
Exhibition designer Event Communications and the staff at Bletchley Park have done a great job, not only in bringing alive the story of this complex site and the people who worked there, but also of conveying some of the theories and ideas behind codebreaking.
I really enjoyed the atmospheric Huts 3 and 6 but did wonder if the many rooms within them needed a bit more variety in terms of interpretation. And a few of the digital interactives weren’t working when I visited. I know broken interactives are common in museums, but it did seem a shame in a place that saw the birth of modern computing.
Themes to build on
There is also some work to do to bring some of the older interpretation at Bletchley Park, which was not done by Event, up to the standard of the recent additions. The museum in Block B features a mind-boggling amount of information about the Enigma, Lorenz, the Bombe and lots more. Never mind a book on a wall, it’s a whole encyclopaedia. But even here there are some fantastic themes to build on.
I particularly enjoyed the stories of second world war spies such as Popov: the Playboy Spy, and the Great D-Day Deception.
It’s not cheap to get into Bletchley Park, so it’s important that the museum has lots for people to see and do.
With the completion of the four-year restoration it can now offer this, and there is plenty of scope for future developments that will add even more to what is already an excellent visitor experience. The museum expects the second phase to take 10 years and cost about £20m, so it is very much a work in progress.
The secret is now blown wide open, as shown by the recent release of a blockbuster film, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which tells the story of Bletchley’s most famous figure, the mathematician and father of computing Alan Turing.
The recent completion of the four-year restoration of Bletchley Park, a Victorian country house close to Milton Keynes, has also played a big part in raising the profile of the centre, where the work its staff did on breaking the Germans’ codes and cyphers, including the Enigma and Lorenz machines, is said to have shortened the war by two years. At one point, about 10,000 people were believed to have been employed at the centre.
Bletchley Park, which was saved from developers’ bulldozers in 1992 by a group of local historians, has been challenging to restore. It is a large site and features lots of different buildings, some of them tricky to conserve as they were only ever meant to be temporary structures.
Telling the story of Bletchley Park is further complicated by the fact that many of its buildings have been demolished.
Communicating calculations
And while there is no doubt that the story of second world war codebreaking is fascinating, it is also complex. The maths behind the codebreaking, for example, can be difficult to understand and communicating this to multiple audiences is far from straightforward.
A major part of the redevelopment was the restoration of Block C, which houses the main entrance, a cafe and the introductory exhibition. It is here that the museum conveys its key messages: it’s an important story, it’s a secret story and it happened at Bletchley Park.
Many of those who came to work at Bletchley Park arrived at the nearby train station, highlighted by some recreated train doors and railway sounds. There is 1940s music and a photo of the man associated with all things British during the second world war: prime minister Winston Churchill.
A short film emphasises the importance of Bletchley Park to the British war effort by showing its impact on events such as the Battle of Britain and D-Day. It also mentions how the first electronic computer, known as Colossus, was developed at the site.
But Bletchley Park’s exhibition designers are not just trying to convey information about technology and important wartime events – they also want to shed light on the role of Turing and some of the others who worked at the centre. Quotes from former staff, labelled “in their own words” are dotted about the displays.
“Anybody admitted to Bletchley Park during the war was allowed into the most enormous secret,” says captain Arthur Maddocks from the Intelligence Corps, further emphasising one of the museum’s main themes.
The second part of the introductory exhibition focuses on the central business of Bletchley Park: codebreaking, which it breaks down into different stages to make the process more digestible for visitors. The explanatory graphic panels are supported by objects in cases and some well thought out computer interactives.
Visitors leave the introductory exhibition armed with the wartime context that Bletchley Park was operating in and some background on the codebreakers and their activities. This prepares them to discover the rest of the site. A free multimedia guide is included in the admission price, which is £15 for adults.
The guide features great accounts by former staff of what it was like to work at the centre. “Some of the people who worked at Bletchley Park were very odd,” one female interviewee says.
“I suppose so many of them were on the border of genius. They tended to be untidy and some of them weren’t particularly clean because I think their minds were on other things.”
Reconstructions
A major focus of the redevelopment has been the restoration and interpretation of the derelict huts where those involved in codebreaking carried out their work. The interpretation in the huts is not designed to provide lots of specific information about codebreaking and the war, it’s more to convey an impression of the atmosphere at Bletchley Park.
In Huts 3 and 6, projected images, sound and reconstructed interiors allow visitors to get a feel for what it was like to work at the centre. The approach, which other museums have used, is to give the impression that the inhabitants have just left the spaces – coats hang on chairs, paperwork is littered about and you overhear snippets of conversation.
Hut 11 is also very atmospheric and features projections with two actors playing members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service who are working on the Bombe, a machine devised by Turing and his colleague Gordon Welchman to speed up the breaking of the Enigma code.
In Hut 8, visitors encounter more interactives that help explain how codes and cyphers were broken. What is interesting about these is that they really get you thinking about topics such as logic and probability, and some of the maths problems presented in them are quite hard.
Exhibition designer Event Communications and the staff at Bletchley Park have done a great job, not only in bringing alive the story of this complex site and the people who worked there, but also of conveying some of the theories and ideas behind codebreaking.
I really enjoyed the atmospheric Huts 3 and 6 but did wonder if the many rooms within them needed a bit more variety in terms of interpretation. And a few of the digital interactives weren’t working when I visited. I know broken interactives are common in museums, but it did seem a shame in a place that saw the birth of modern computing.
Themes to build on
There is also some work to do to bring some of the older interpretation at Bletchley Park, which was not done by Event, up to the standard of the recent additions. The museum in Block B features a mind-boggling amount of information about the Enigma, Lorenz, the Bombe and lots more. Never mind a book on a wall, it’s a whole encyclopaedia. But even here there are some fantastic themes to build on.
I particularly enjoyed the stories of second world war spies such as Popov: the Playboy Spy, and the Great D-Day Deception.
It’s not cheap to get into Bletchley Park, so it’s important that the museum has lots for people to see and do.
With the completion of the four-year restoration it can now offer this, and there is plenty of scope for future developments that will add even more to what is already an excellent visitor experience. The museum expects the second phase to take 10 years and cost about £20m, so it is very much a work in progress.
Project data
- Cost £8m
- Main funder Heritage Lottery Fund
- Exhibition design and fit-out Event Communications
- Conservation architect Kennedy O’Callaghan Architects
- Landscape architect Philip Cave Associates
- Project management Groupe Artelia
- Principal fit-out contractor The Hub
- Principal construction contractor Fairhurst Ward Abbotts
- Structural engineer Alan Baxter Integrated Design
- M&E consultant King Shaw Associates
- Interactives Clay
- AV Elbow
- Display cases ClickNetherfield
- Audioguide ATS Heritage
