Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park (BP) is a site located in the town of Bletchley, in Milton Keynes, England. During World War II, Bletchley Park was the location of the United Kingdom's efforts to break ciphers, including those of the Enigma and Lorenz machine used by Nazi Germany. The intelligence produced by Bletchley Park, codenamed ULTRA, has been credited with hastening the end of World War II.

Before Station X

The Bletchley Park estate had been a manor since the Norman invasion. The earliest known reference is in 1235 (Legg, 1999), when it was owned by the de Grey family until 1616. It is also known that Browne Willis was lord of the manor in the early 18th century, some of his buildings (now lost) dating from 1711. The manor was at some time appropriated by the Crown. The present mansion was completed between 1883 and 1926 by Herbert Samuel Leon (1850-1926), a financier and Liberal MP, who extended the red brick farmhouse of 1860 http://mysite.freeserve.com/WestBletchley/firstns.htm. Its style is a mixture of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque and was the subject of much bemused comment from those who worked there, or visited, during World War II. Leon's estate covered 581 acres (235 ha), of which Bletchley Park occupied about 55 acres (22 ha). Leon's wife, Fanny, died in 1937 http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~foss/valentin/Bletchley%20Park.html, and in 1938 the site was sold to a builder, who was about to demolish the mansion and build a housing estate. However, just in time, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, the Director of Naval Intelligence, head of MI6 and founder of the Government Code and Cypher School, knowing that war was imminent, bought the site with his own money in the Spring of 1938. The fact that Sinclair, and not the Government, owned the site was not revealed until 1997 when a trust was set up to save the site from redevelopment.

Related Topics:
Manor - Norman invasion - 1235 - 1616 - Browne Willis - Lord of the manor - 1883 - 1926 - Liberal - MP - 1937 - 1938 - Hugh Sinclair - MI6 - Government Code and Cypher School

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The estate was conveniently located on the "Varsity Line" (now largely closed) between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which supplied many of the codebreakers. It was also chosen for its proximity to a major road (the A5) to London and to a route for telephone trunk lines.

Related Topics:
Varsity Line - Oxford - Cambridge - A5 - Telephone

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Hugh Sebag-Montifiore, author of the book Enigma, is Leon's grandson. His book contains several photographs of the manor, before, during, and after WWII.

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