Context 160 - July 2019

20 C O N T E X T 1 6 0 : J U L Y 2 0 1 9 physical appearance of these spaces but also their historical meaning, and the activities of their wartime inhabitants. The two most recent projects undertaken by the trust reflect this need. The ‘Bombe Breakthrough’ exhibit in Hut 11A, which opened in 2018, describes the development of the cryptanalytical Bombe machines used to break the Enigma cipher. While the exhibition is linked to the original purpose of the building containing it, the story told is much wider, extending beyond Bletchley Park to other UK sites and across the Atlantic to the USA. More recently, the ‘D-Day: interception, intelligence, invasion’ exhibition and film opened in 2019 in the former Teleprinter Building. This exhibi- tion tells a story which extends far beyond the building, and is told in the form of an immersive audio-visual experience rather than through a direct interpretation of the space. Both projects began with extensive restora- tion of the building fabric. This was carried out in consultation with conservation architects (Kennedy O’Callaghan Architects) and the local planning authorities (Milton Keynes Council) to ensure best practice. In the case of the former Teleprinter Building, this structure had been substantially altered from its wartime state by conversion into an assembly hall in the 1950s. The restoration process included the removal of several post-war features and the exposure of, for example, original floor treatments and the footings of lost internal partitions. This allowed an excellent opportunity to understand the original 1941 buildings and confirm some of the limited documentary evidence for their original character. The result was an iterative process of understanding the structures through analysis of the fabric revealed by the restoration, and documentary research, which provided both a practical brief for the contractors (concerning such matters as constraints, sensitive fabric and environmental conditions) and offered design inspiration and period feel which could be fed into the finished restoration. Both the Teleprinter Building and Hut 11A turned out to have many features in common which were not apparent prior to the restoration works. This allowed the two buildings to be more fully contextualised and their place in the structural evolution of the site to be bet- ter understood. In the case of the Teleprinter Building, monitoring of external landscaping works also revealed archaeological remains of two demolished timber buildings which had formed part of the original wartime complex, enriching our understanding of the original build. The outlines of these huts were incorpo- rated into the landscaping so that their original footprint is presented to visitors. Once the buildings were restored, they became in one sense an empty box into which we could Opposite: The replica of the Bombe machine and the original wartime floor (Photo: Andy Stagg) Visitors watching the D-Day exhibition