Footsteps of WWII · Britain
Bletchley Park
Codebreaking · 15 Aug 1939 – 1945
The story
The Government Code and Cypher School moved to this Victorian mansion on 15 August 1939. Here codebreakers including Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman built on Polish work against the German Enigma machine; their electromechanical bombes found daily settings, Hut 6 broke Army and Air Force Enigma and Hut 8 Naval Enigma. The intelligence, codenamed Ultra, was graded above Most Secret. Later the Colossus computers attacked the German high command's Lorenz cipher. By January 1945 nearly 9,000 people worked for Bletchley and its outstations, about three-quarters of them women. Nobody spoke of it publicly until the 1970s.
What to look for
Restored huts, including Huts 6 and 8, and Block B with a working rebuilt bombe and Enigma machines. Visit the mansion, the lake and the wooden huts. The National Museum of Computing in Block H, with a rebuilt Colossus, has a separate ticket.
Plan your visit
Open daily 09:30–17:00 to 31 Oct, then 09:30–16:00 in winter; closed 24–26 December. Adult about £28.75, valid as an annual pass; 10% off when booked online in advance. Allow at least four hours.
Things change, so check opening times before you travel.
Nearby sites
- Bentley Priory Museum, Stanmore · 50 km
- Battle of Britain Bunker, Uxbridge · 54 km
- IWM Duxford · 60 km
- Coventry Cathedral ruins · 69 km
- Churchill War Rooms, London · 69 km
- St Paul's Cathedral and the Blitz, London · 70 km
All 160 sites in Footsteps of WWII →
Footsteps of WWII: Europe 1939–1945
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The whole Second World War in Europe, from the first shots at Westerplatte on 1 September 1939 to the German surrender in May 1945: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne, Stalingrad, Berlin and the camps, in 15 areas from Britain to Russia.
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