Kelsey Griffin, Director of Museum Operations for Bletchley Park Trust, writes:
Bletchley Park, once Britain’s best kept secret, is now a vibrant heritage site with exhibitions, events and educational activities and open daily to visitors. The Park’s breathtaking WW2 codebreaking successes helped shorten the war by around two years, saving countless lives.
The true Bletchley Park Story is more incredible than fiction. A desperate race against time, pitting Britain’s best brains against Hitler and his chief commanders. The WW2 codebreakers’ audacious mission was to crack the German Enigma machine and decode other seemingly unbreakable messages.
Against them? Odds of 158 million, million, million. Their reward? ‘Ultra’ Intelligence that saved Allied convoys carrying essential supplies from U Boat wolfpacks on the prowl. So effective was Bletchley Park that the decoded messages sometimes reached the Allies before the enemy.
One phenomenal achievement was the total secrecy in which, at the peak of the war, 8,500 people worked in three shifts around the clock. Another was the innovative and cutting-edge technology they designed to do the job. Bletchley Park was at the heart of the world’s biggest secret communications network and was the birthplace of the first electronic digital computers. A huge codebreaking operation, the like of which had never been seen before, birthplace of GCHQ, today’s Government Communications Headquarters, Bletchley Park was Churchill’s Secret Passion and he called its codebreakers his 'geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled'.
At the end of the war the thousands of remarkable people responsible for the intellectual codebreaking weapon that shortened the war so dramatically went about their normal daily lives not breathing a word about Bletchley Park for thirty years. Never receiving, nor expecting to receive, recognition for their astonishing achievements which had the most profound outcome on WW2, the twentieth century, the free world and the information age.
In 1991, the site was almost empty and plans were afoot to demolish the buildings to make way for a housing and supermarket development. The secrecy that had been so critical to Bletchley Park's success during the war was now counting against it. For secrecy meant ignorance, starving the Park of investment and resulting in its slow decline. By the time the public become aware of the Park's wartime and technological significance, it was almost too late. Almost, but not quite.
In 1992, the Bletchley Park Trust was formed by some passionate individuals with the aim of preserving Bletchley Park as a permanent tribute to the unsung intellectual warriors such as Turing, Welchman and Knox. Since then the Trust has faced, against unfavourable odds, a desperate race against time reflecting the challenges of its codebreaking forebears - to save Bletchley Park for the nation. Without ongoing public funding, the Trust has worked tirelessly to secure the land and preserve the iconic codebreaking huts and related buildings on a sprawling and ageing site.
In November 2008, English Heritage announced that it would invest £330,000 for the Trust’s biggest single problem, immediate critical repairs to the decaying Mansion roof. At the same time English Heritage 
offered a further £100,000 per year over the next three years, subject to match-funding, for the backlog of essential, urgent maintenance and repairs. In the last few weeks, Milton Keynes Council has offered this match-funding. The Trust is currently working on a major bid for Heritage Lottery Funding and is hopeful for the success of this bid to transform Bletchley Park into the world-class heritage and educational centre it deserves to be to match the significant impact it had on the way we all live today. The Trust has a solid business plan which demonstrates that once the restoration and regeneration work is complete the museum will be completely self-supporting. Public interest in the Park has never been higher with over 80,000 visitors in 2008.
Yet the fight is not over. Whilst capital project work is ongoing and estimated to take another two to three years, it is the day-to-day operational costs associated with running a large, rundown and seriously neglected site that the Trust struggles to meet. In May of this year, Bletchley Park Trust suffered further disappointment when the government rejected an appeal for aid.
Should you wish to make a donation, follow the link on the homepage at:
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk
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