Bletchley Park

[nanila]

Last weekend, we stayed in a Landmark Trust property a mere half-hour journey to Bletchley Park. We were surprised by nice weather on the Saturday, so we made the trip. Below is an assortment of photos from the selection of buildings we managed to visit over the course of five hours. I don’t think we saw more than a third of it, so we’ll definitely take advantage of the year-long entry that the steep admission price gets you to see the rest.



The dingy basement has had a lick of paint and yet somehow doggedly retains its character.



Listening stations.



Keiki does some Morse code-breaking.



Humuhumu does some Enigma encoding.



A surprisingly dry and sunny day after all the rain we’ve been having.



Daffodils were not quite ready.



The Mansion seemed like it was a bit of all right.



Not so sure the Intelligence Factory needs this.





Humuhumu and I spent quite a while on this interactive exhibit, plotting the locations of various maritime assets and enemies.





Many of the personal testimonials in the exhibition mention how boring and repetitive some of the intelligence work was.



You can see why they resorted to putting frogs in the pneumatic tube system to liven up the day.

The Park is beautifully maintained and the interactive exhibits are well designed and engaging - I’d say from the age of about 10 on up - so well worth a visit. I restrained myself to one book in the gift shop (The Walls Have Ears by Helen Fry) but could easily have brought home a stack.

Comments

[thekumquat]

Can confirm. The Computer Museum next door is also worth a visit, so your kids can laugh at the primitive games you (I, at least) played at their age.

[hamsterwoman]

What a cool place and a cool visit! Very neat that one can have a go at Morse code and the Enigma machine and other hands on things!

[alchemicink]

Sounds like a fun place to explore! Glad y'all had a good time and the weather was nice too (I love the little daffodils photo. They're almost ready for spring)

[annofowlshire]

Ooooh! Will need to take Enting there in a couple of years.

[antisoppist]

I was at Bletchley Park on 9 February! For my Dad's 87th birthday. I had been before with the kids a few years ago but he hadn't ever been and he wanted to see the amateur radio bit especially because he's a licensed radio amateur. My sister and brother-in-law drove him and I met them there. He refused a wheelchair and was getting tired with the walking so we didn't make it to the house but we saw the amateur radio bit (the volunteers were lovely) and B hut about breaking Enigma and the part about Colossus with the replica model. Youngest can't remember much from when we went so I'm planning to go back with her as I now have entry for a year and look at all the rest of it again.

It's so good they managed to save it and its history when there were plans to knock it down and build houses on it.

[silveradept]

That seems like a treasure trove of history and knowledge and probably the good and sanitized bits of both. It looks like there are enough interactive exhibits to keep the attention of those who want something to do as well as something to look at.

[sabethea]

How did your kids get so big, omg?!

Bletchley Park is fascinating. And also I love that the testimonies say how dull it was. More stories of past things should be honest about stuff like that. “Armies in the 900s - actually, a lot of it as just marching to the battleground rather than fighting. Then a lot of sitting round campfires, waiting for someone to give orders to do something, freezing your arse off. Then, if you were on the front line, you could be cut down within minutes, so days of marching and sitting around for five minutes of fighting and dying of sword wounds - fast if you were lucky, slowly and painfully if you were not.”

[sabethea]

Sorry, I was off on one there, it’s the middle of the night and I haven’t got to write in ages so my mind is going haywire.

[sfred]

Cool! I've been to a wedding there but not to properly look at the museum: must go back sometime.

[purplecthulhu]

I grew up in Bletchley, and thought that the remains of wartime barracks etc., which were there to guard the park, were something that was normal. Not that we knew anything about the Park back then - the truth only came out in the mid-80s by which time I'd decamped to London. All we knew was that it was something to do with the post office (who ran the phone system in the UK back then) and was very confidential. Little did we know...

[ephemera]

I went to Bletchley about 18 months back as an extra adult on a school trip, and was really impressed with both their education program and just how much the curation, restoration, and presentation of the site has evolved! The Computer Museum is also well worth a visit, especially when they're doing open days with opportunities for hands on stuff!