The Enigma that is Bletchley

Faced with a 24 hour tube strike on Thursday, it was useless trying to look at any London attractions. We decided to visit  Bletchley which is just over an hour outside London on the main rail line. Bletchley was set up at the beginning of WW2 as a code breaking station and was featured in the recent movie on Alan Turing's life, The Imitation Game.

The grounds and buildings are beautiful....

The main house at Bletchley Park.

We were able to visit Hut 6 which was where one of the distant relatives, John Herivel worked as a code breaker 

Conditions were very Spartan!

 

We also saw the enigma machine which the Germans believed were unbreakable!

It was fantastic to see the memorial to the Polish code breakers who put in much of the crucial foundation work during the 30s that led to the breaking of Enigma.

This is the reconstruction of one the bombe machines which helped to crack the codes.

At its peak, 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park during the war and it is great to see that their contribution has finally been recognised.