BLETCHLEY PARK CENTRAL AREA FROM THE AIR
M
Mansion
C
Croquet
Lawn
L
Lake
1,4,3,6,8
The Wooden Huts
11
Block 11
S
Stable
Yard, Gateway and Cottage
A,B
A and B
Blocks
T
Tennis
Courts
G
Garage
and Motor Museum
(NORTH is to the right of the
picture.)
|
|
THE BLETCHLEY AREA was selected because many
academics who were working on
‘Enigma’ were associated with the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and the
village lay mid way between them. Bletchley Park
itself was selected because the house was only a
short walk from the railway station which was on
the LMS (London, Midland and Scottish) main line
from London to the North and from which branch
lines served both Oxford and Cambridge. The
property also had its own water supply and
electricity generators. Additionally, new
telephone cables to London and the North had been
laid in the vicinity and a new repeater station
had been established close by.
|
As the number of code breakers
employed at Bletchley grew from the original 200
the original buildings soon proved inadequate.
Makeshift wooden huts, served by a maze of
permanent driveways, were tranported in sections
from Guildford and erected in the grounds to
accommodate the additional staff. The
construction was of Canadian pine and the outer
walls were covered with asbestos sheeting or
'shiplap' boarding. They were labelled
pragmatically as "Hut 3", "Hut 6", "Hut 8", or
whatever number had been allocated to them.
|
Most of the huts were partially (or
almost wholly) surrounded by brick anti-bomb
blast walls sited about two feet from the outside
wall of the huts and extending upwards to the
eaves of the building. Both sunlight and
ventilation became somewhat restricted by these
walls and artificial lighting was in permanent
use by the workers inside. In summer the huts
became almost unbearably hot. During winter
nights the fumes from the coke-burning stoves,
unable to escape because of the blackout screens
on the windows, produced truly nauseating conditions
for the workers to have to endure. The blast-proof
construction, however, was never really put to
the test. On 20 November 1940 six bombs fell in
the neighbourhood, probably intended for the
nearby railway station and sidings or the
railway's Wolverton Works some four miles away.
One bomb fell close to Hut 4 doing just minor
damage to an extension, and another bomb landed
near the stable block but failed to explode. This
was the only time throughout the war that bombs
fell within the park boundary.
|
|
Each hut was responsible for
carrying out a particular task, and generally
paired with another. For instance, Hut 6
specialised in German Army Enigma, and passed the
decrypts to Hut 3 where operatives with
linguistic skills translated the messages and
attempted to correlate the information. Hut 8
specialised in decoding German Navy Enigma
messages; the decrypts were sent to Hut 4 for
translation and intelligence assessment.
More substantial concrete and brick
buildings were built two or three years later and
many of the personnel performing the various
duties in the wooden huts were transferred to
them. (The original hut numbers were also carried
through into the new blocks.)
The Park also needed its own
domestic services such as fire brigade,
maintenance engineers etc.. Too much of value
could have been destroyed by the time the village
fire engine arrived, and secrecy may have been
compromised if outsiders were able to see
classified material.
The park eventually employed over
12,000 people, most working in continuous eight
hour shifts to keep the decoding system running
for twenty-four hours a day. Organised leisure
activities included dancing, fencing, drama,
music and choral societies, and bridge and chess
clubs. On Churchill's orders, two tennis courts
were built on the site of the old maze, close to
the mansion.
|
|
Strict security was enforced
throughout the war and for many years afterwards.
Everyone who worked there had to sign the
Official Secrets Act. Various parts of the
establishment were isolated from other parts;
many of the employees were unaware of what their
fellow-workers were doing. Bletchley Park and the
work performed there remained top-secret until
the last of the mechanical Enigma-type machines
in foreign countries had been replaced by more
modern systems. Fifty years after the war a
husband and wife, who had married shortly after
the war, were each completely unaware that the
other partner had worked at Bletchley Park until
they received separate invitations to attend a
reunion!
It was Winston Churchill who,
during his only official visit to the Park on 6
September 1941, described the workers at
Bletchley as "the geese that laid the golden eggs
and never cackled." This was a reference to their
productive and importantly secret work. Churchill
had also, on an earlier occasion, used the word
‘ultra’ when referring to a source of
secret information; it was later used more
particularly to describe the intelligence
supplied by the Enigma and later decrypts.
Workers were not billeted in the
Park but were accommodated with families and in
hotels and public houses in towns and villages
situated within a twenty mile radius of
Bletchley. Private buses and public transport
were used to transport them to and from their
billets. Many travelled by bicycle, and a number
of substantial cycle sheds can still be seen
within the Park.
|
Between Hut 6 and Hut 1 looking towards Hut 8.
(Right)
|
|
|
|
