We spend the day at Bletchley Park, just outside Milton Keynes. Bletchley Park is a place of exceptional historical importance. It is the home of British codebreaking and a birthplace of modern information technology. It played a major role in World War Two, producing secret intelligence which had a direct and profound influence on the outcome of the conflict.

The Enigma coding machine offered 159 million million million possible settings to choose from, which the Germans believed unbreakable. The Poles had broken Enigma in as early as 1932, but in 1939 with the prospect of war, the Poles decided to inform the British of their successes. Dilly Knox, one of the former British World War One Codebreakers, was convinced he could break the system and set up an Enigma Research Section, comprising himself and Tony Kendrick, later joined by Peter Twinn, Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman. They worked in the stable yard at Bletchley Park and that is where the first wartime Enigma messages were broken in January 1940. Enigma traffic continued to be broken routinely at Bletchley Park for the remainder of the war.

Perhaps Bletchley Park's greatest success was breaking the Germans' strategic ciphers. These complex ciphers were used to secure communications between Berlin and Army commanders in the field. Messages consisted of teleprinter code encyphered with the highly complex Lorenz cypher machine. Under Professor Max Newman the ‘Newmanry’ started to devise machines to mechanise the process of decoding. This ultimately led to the design and construction by the brilliant General Post Office (GPO) engineer Tommy Flowers of ‘Colossus’, the world’s first semi-programmable electronic computer. Breaking into these ciphers allowed the Allied staff planning for the invasion of Europe to obtain unprecedented detail of the German defences, and to see into the minds of the enemy commanders including Hitler himself. See a reconstruction of Colossus on display.

We visit on a 1940s reenactment day, with military vehicles, live music, demonstrations and costumed characters on display.You're welcome to come along in period costume!

Coach leaves Winsford @ 7.30am through to Northwich Memorial Court @ 8.00am
Full list of pickup points and times here - schedule (a).
£25 (entry fees extra) - book online
or phone Carol on 07932927694 to reserve your ticket

Back