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| ==Before Station X== | ==Before Station X== | ||
| The Bletchley Park estate had been a manor since the ]. The earliest known reference is in ] , when it was owned by the de Grey family. It is also known that ] 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 built between ] and ] by Herbert Samuel Leon (1850-1926), a financier and ] ], who extended the red brick farmhouse of 1860 . |
The Bletchley Park estate had been a manor since the ]. The earliest known reference is in ] , when it was owned by the de Grey family. It is also known that ] 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 built between ] and ] by Herbert Samuel Leon (1850-1926), a financier and ] ], who extended the red brick farmhouse of 1860 . Its style is a mixture of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque and was the subject of much comment from those who worked there during WWII. Leon's estate covered 581 acres (235 hectares), of which Bletchley Park occupied about 55 acres (22 hectares). Leon's wife died in ] , and in ] the site was sold to a builder, who was about to demolish the mansion and build a housing estate when the War began, and the Government Property Agency requisitioned the site. | ||
| Hugh Sebag-Montifiore, author of the recent book Enigma, is Leon's grandson. His book contains several photographs of the manor. | |||
| ==External links== | ==External links== | ||
Revision as of 20:57, 5 April 2004
Bletchley Park is a stately home near the town of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, England, about 50 miles north of London. It is situated near to the town of Bletchley.
During World War II, Bletchley Park was the site of the United Kingdom's efforts to break Axis ciphers, particularly the Enigma and Lorenz ciphers used by Nazi Germany. The estate was conveniently located midway between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which supplied many of the codebreakers.
The Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS), the intelligence bureau responsible for interception and decryption of foreign transmissions, moved into the Park in 1938. The radio station constructed in the park for its use was given the codename "Station X" — this term is often erroneously applied to the code-breaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. Station X was soon moved south to Whaddon Hall, to prevent any attention being drawn to the Bletchley site.
Early visitors described themselves as members of Captain Ridley's shooting party. Later, the code-name for the project was "ULTRA".
Among the famous mathematicians and cryptanalysts working there, perhaps the most influential and best-known was Alan Turing. In 1943, the special-purpose electronic computer Colossus was designed at Bletchley Park. This computer was used to crack the Lorenz cipher.
It is thought that at the height of the codebreaking efforts during the war, more than 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park.
The Bletchley Park effort was comparable in influence to other WW II-era technological efforts, such as the crytographic work at Arlington Hall, development of microwave radar at MIT's Radiation Lab and the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons.
At the end of the war, much of the equipment used and its blueprints were destroyed by order of Churchill. Though thousands of people were involved in the decoding efforts, the participants remained silent for decades about what they had done during the war, and it was only in the 1970s that the work at Bletchley Park was revealed to the general public. After the war, the site belonged to several owners, including British Telecom and the Civil Aviation Authority .
The Bletchley Park trust has been founded to further the maintenance of the site as a museum devoted to the codebreakers.
Before Station X
The Bletchley Park estate had been a manor since the Norman invasion. The earliest known reference is in 1308 , when it was owned by the de Grey family. 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 built between 1883 and 1926 by Herbert Samuel Leon (1850-1926), a financier and Liberal MP, who extended the red brick farmhouse of 1860 . Its style is a mixture of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque and was the subject of much comment from those who worked there during WWII. Leon's estate covered 581 acres (235 hectares), of which Bletchley Park occupied about 55 acres (22 hectares). Leon's wife died in 1937 , and in 1938 the site was sold to a builder, who was about to demolish the mansion and build a housing estate when the War began, and the Government Property Agency requisitioned the site.
Hugh Sebag-Montifiore, author of the recent book Enigma, is Leon's grandson. His book contains several photographs of the manor.