Bletchley Park: now you can decode the enigma of country-estate cipher school
Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing's genius helped cut short a war, is no longer a secret as visitors flock to Britain's famous codebreaking site, writes Gary Jones
"Filming at Bletchley Park was amazing," actor Benedict Cumberbatch said of his leading-man role in The Imitation Game. Based on the true story of pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, the multiple Oscar-nominated movie depicts a race against time to decipher secret German military communications during the second world war. "It really was very special. You really feel like you're playing slightly with ghosts."
Secreted away on the edge of London satellite town Milton Keynes, the low-key country estate of Bletchley Park attracted close to 200,000 visitors from around the world last year. On a crisp and windless winter's morning, however, it is placid and hushed. The manicured lawns are inviting, but their wooden picnic tables rest empty under a crystal-blue sky.
A primary-school outing of tousle-haired children marches past and a lone coot weaves among the grey-brown rushes of the grounds' centrepiece lake. The chimneys and oxidised-copper roof turret of the Victorian mansion opposite - the wartime headquarters of the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) - are reflected in the dark water. It is difficult to appreciate the full magnitude of what was achieved here.
"By the end of the war, the facility employed about 10,500 people," says Bletchley Park duty manager Dr Joel Greenberg. By then the codebreakers of GC&CS were processing tens of thousands of covert messages every day. It is estimated that their labours shortened the war by two years, possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives. "There were 8,500 working on the site on a day-to-day basis," adds Greenberg, "and several thousand at surrounding outstations within commuting distance, all working on a three eight-hour shift system."
All Bletchley Park staff had signed the Official Secrets Act, and none were permitted to speak publicly of their work, even after the war. Britain's wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, referred to them as "the geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled".