Context 160 - July 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 0 : J U L Y 2 0 1 9 19 Second world war DAVID KENYON and FIONA JENKINS ‘Is that screw-hole really necessary?’ Two projects at Bletchley Park have restored second world war buildings by recreating their former appearance, and now tell their story by explaining their function and significance. During the second world war Bletchley Park was the home of the Government Code and Cipher School, the UK’s principal signals intelligence agency, responsible for decipher- ing and analysing enemy communications to provide vital intelligence to Allied governments and battlefield commanders. The organisation began the war in 1939 with only approximately 150 staff, accommodated in a Victorian man- sion and stable block. By 1945 the number of staff had risen to nearly 9,000, and the site had been subject to extensive building work, result- ing in the presence of numerous wooden huts, as well as more permanent brick and concrete office blocks. Such was the secrecy of the codebreakers’ work that, although the site remained in government hands after the war, the historic significance of many of these buildings was unknown, even to the people subsequently living and working in them. It was not until the late 1970s that the story of ULTRA and the success of Bletchley Park’s wartime operations became widely known, and it was not until the early 1990s that the site was acquired by the Bletchley Park Trust. As a consequence, the trust became the custodian of a number of buildings and structures which, while of international historical importance, had nonetheless been subject to a significant degree of neglect, alteration and dilapidation. The mis- sion of the Bletchley Park Trust since that time has been to preserve and restore these buildings and to make them, and the story of what took place in them, accessible to the public as a visitor attraction. This presents a series of challenges which, while by no means unknown to those charged with the preservation of built heritage, perhaps occur in an unusual combination. The first issue is that many of the buildings were not intended to be permanent structures. This, combined with 50 years of benign neglect, has meant that many of them have required, or will require, substantial restoration. The second issue concerns how to present these spaces to the public. Unlike, for example, a historic country house, many of these buildings had very basic internal furnishings, and in many cases these have been largely swept away, even to the extent of demolition of walls and blocking of openings by later occupants. And the significance of these places lies in the intellectual feats performed within them rather than in their material con- tents or architectural merit. Bletchley Park Trust benefited from an HLF- funded project, completed in 2014, that allowed large parts of the site to be restored. At that time the decision was made to set-dress several spaces to their wartime appearance to provide an immersive experience for visitors. These spaces have been very successful; however, there remains a requirement to provide more detailed storytelling on the site, describing not only the The Teleprinter Building housing the D-Day Interception Intelligence Invasion exhibition (Photo: Will Amlot)