Ted Enever - Britains Best Kept Secret: Ultras Base at Bletchley Park

First published in 1994

This revised and expanded third edition first published in 1999

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL 52 QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

The estate of Ted Enever, 1994, 1999, 2011

The right of Ted Enever, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7190 7

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7189 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

For more than a century now, Bletchley Park has had an important place in the life of the town and its neighbourhood.

Until the 1930s it was the residence of Sir Herbert Leon and his family. They served the interests of the community with the sense of duty that characterized leading families before the Second World War. Many people in the Bletchley area still remember them with gratitude and affection.

In 1938 the Mansion and its grounds were taken over as the wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School, known to the public now as the Government Communications Headquarters. This organization controlled all British cryptanalysis and carried out most of the work itself on the site of the Park and in other nearby country houses. It also transmitted the resulting intelligence, under the now famous Ultra code-name, to British, Anglo-American and United States operational headquarters in the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean and Europe. Such were its successes that the number of staff employed rose from under 200 in 1939 to nearly 7,000 by the middle of 1944.

So large a body of men and women, and one that was constantly entering and leaving the Park from the spring of 1940, when it began operating around the clock in three shifts, could not fail to have an impact on the life and thought, and the economy, of the neighbourhood. Billeted to begin with mainly in Bletchley itself, workers at the Park were eventually accommodated with families and in hotels and public houses in virtually every town and village within a twenty mile radius, Milton Keynes being one of the smallest villages in those days. At 8 a.m., 4 p.m. and midnight, and more frequently in emergencies, buses and station-wagons brought them in and took them home. By day, Bletchley railway station was thronged with people taking or returning from leave or a day-off in London. Cinemas and public houses were busy. Over and above their friendships with the families they lived with, those who worked at the Park were not cut off from their communities.

They never knew, however, what the local population thought about the nature of their work. They themselves were sworn to secrecy and, on the other hand, their tactful hosts refrained from asking awkward questions; if they had their suspicions, they did not air them. It was enough to know that Bletchley Park was engaged on war work.

The considerable physical reminder of that work the Park and its huts and other buildings have been used for a variety of purposes since the end of the Second World War. But they have remained sufficiently preserved for the Bletchley Park Trust to have been able to give them a new lease of life, taking them into the twenty-first century as both a national and local memorial to the important contribution that was made in them to the victory of the Allies.

Aim of the Bletchley Park Trust

To create within Bletchley Park a living memorial to Second World War intelligence work, computing and cryptography, through the creation of an integrated heritage park of international repute. With an overall theme of The Science of Communications, the Park will compromise four zones covering heritage, conference, community and knowledge.

Walk through the big iron gates that mark the Wilton Avenue entrance to Bletchley Park and you find yourself in a time warp. The 55 acre complex, though in continual use since its famous codebreakers moved out when victory was secured in 1945, still retains the air of that bygone era. The Mansion, a large, Grade 2 listed Victorian house, continues its domination of the site, just as it has done for more than a hundred years, and sits like an architectural jewel in a sea of wooden huts and sprawling, heavily constructed brick and concrete blocks, most of single storey structure and exuding a permanence almost beyond belief. Now, fifty years on, Britains best kept secret still looks, and feels, one imagines, much as it did during the wartime years, though now its wartime work is both better understood and valued and the site recognized as part of our national heritage.

But that recognition has been hard won and only came in 1993. As recently as 1992 there was a very real possibility that the owners, British Telecom and Government itself, would gain permission for redevelopment. Then, the bulldozers would have moved in and swept away the wartime buildings, so destroying for ever a vital piece of twentieth-century history and turning the site into just another housing estate. That has not happened, thanks to the efforts of the community based Bletchley Park Trust and the support it has received, not least from the Bletchley Park Club, the Bletchley Park Residents Association and most recently, since it has recognized and appreciated the historical significance of Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes Council.

Throughout 1992 and 1993, my Bletchley Park Trust colleagues, Roger Bristow, Tony Sale, Peter Jarvis and I, gave guided tours of the Park to a wide variety of groups and individuals. These tours are still taking place and all of our visitors, of course, have a common interest to learn more of the history of the site and particularly, the importance of the work carried out there during the Second World War. Much has been written already of the latter, especially by those whose personal involvement at the time can only now be understood fully by those of us of younger generations. So this narrative does not set out to tell the whole intricate story of the Park and its wartime role indeed there is probably no one person alive today who could do that, given the organizational structure of the Park at the time, especially following the death of the late Professor Sir Harry Hinsley, who wrote the first edition Foreword. What it does hope to accomplish is to give the reader a brief insight into the place and the role of certain key 1940s buildings within the Parks sizeable complex, while at the same time relating anecdotes and tales which the Trusts own research has revealed. So, in effect, this book is the guided tour mentioned above, with its associated commentary.

Much of the information, however, has been difficult to obtain because of the impenetrable secret that has been Bletchley Park for the past sixty years. The Bletchley Park Trust has used its best endeavours to get it right, but this has not been easy, so bear with me please if some aspects, known as they may be to individual readers, are perhaps slightly off-line. And if they are, and you can correct them, then the Trust would be grateful for this information.