The home of World War II codebreakers at Bletchley Park has been awarded a £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). Read more BBC News - Bletchley Park wins £4.6m Heritage Lottery Fund grant
I agree - great news. Let's hope the original huts can be preserved and the plans don't get too 'Disneyland'. I feel the site should retain as much as possible of it's wartime atmosphere and not become too much of a modern 'activity centre'.
Mike L I concur with the presavation of the huts, everywhere seems to be pulling them down and burning them. They are part of our military heritage we need to keep one or two
Good news about the grant but tonight I read this from the Bletchley Park Trust.. "£1.7million in match funding must be raised by the Bletchley Park Trust in order to unlock the £4.6million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for the restoration of Bletchley Park. The crumbling Codebreaking Huts have been offered a lifeline by the HLF but it is a race against time to raise the funds needed to complete the investment package before they are lost to the nation forever.....The Bletchley Park Trust has received tremendous support over the past few years but now a permanent solution is so close and we need public support more than ever. In broad terms each £1 from you will unlock £2.70 more from HLF." I've made a small donation and anyone else who wants to can do so in the ways described in the following link Action This Day!
Good news about the grant but tonight I read this from the Bletchley Park Trust.. "£1.7million in match funding must be raised by the Bletchley Park Trust in order to unlock the £4.6million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for the restoration of Bletchley Park. The crumbling Codebreaking Huts have been offered a lifeline by the HLF but it is a race against time to raise the funds needed to complete the investment package before they are lost to the nation forever.....The Bletchley Park Trust has received tremendous support over the past few years but now a permanent solution is so close and we need public support more than ever. In broad terms each £1 from you will unlock £2.70 more from HLF." I've made a small donation and anyone else who wants to can do so in the ways described in the following link Action This Day! WTF. In recent years the place has shown it's future is viable, thanks to it's hard work, so why do those people at HLF insist on the 1.7M fund? W******. I've made a small donation. (least I could do as I've given up buying lottery tickets and not visited BP in 10 years.)
Good news about the grant but tonight I read this from the Bletchley Park Trust.. "£1.7million in match funding must be raised by the Bletchley Park Trust in order to unlock the £4.6million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for the restoration of Bletchley Park. The crumbling Codebreaking Huts have been offered a lifeline by the HLF but it is a race against time to raise the funds needed to complete the investment package before they are lost to the nation forever.....The Bletchley Park Trust has received tremendous support over the past few years but now a permanent solution is so close and we need public support more than ever. In broad terms each £1 from you will unlock £2.70 more from HLF." I've made a small donation and anyone else who wants to can do so in the ways described in the following link Action This Day! To update: I've just seen the latest tweet from the campaign and so far a further £4.5k has been raised. There is such a long way to go for the target to be reached but every pound donated really does make a difference.
BBC News - Bletchley Park's wartime code breaking huts in disrepair During World War II, Bletchley Park was the top secret home for Britain's code breakers. But that secrecy, which lasted for decades after the war, came with a price - many of the buildings where vital work took place were left to ruin. The plan now is to restore them. Before work began, Bletchley's chief executive Iain Standen gave security correspondent Gordon Corera a tour of one of the huts. BBC News - Bletchley Park enigma code huts prepare for restoration During World War II, Huts 3 and 6 of Bletchley Park were home to some of the finest minds in the country, working around the clock to crack German codes. Today, the only inhabitants you will find inside those buildings in Buckinghamshire are a pigeon and a rat - both deceased. Hut 6 was at the centre of the actual breaking of the enigma code used by the German army and air force. Hut 3 was then passed the decoded messages for translation, analysis and dispatch. Left to rot Seventy years ago, smoke would have hung in the air from the cigars and cigarettes smoked by the assorted workers and from the fires that were lit to keep the buildings warm. Now there are drips from pipes falling into large holes in the floor. Whilst other parts of Bletchley Park have been restored, many of the key buildings - like Huts 3 and 6 - have been left to ruin, but not for much longer as a major refurbishment project will get under way in the coming days. While the grand, though not beautiful, main house is the most iconic image of Bletchley Park, the huts were where much of the real work took place. They were austere, functional buildings, built to purpose. "They are our artefacts," says Iain Standen, the CEO of Bletchley, who showed me around. "They are what Bletchley is all about. We want to restore them back to their former glory." Bletchley's role in breaking German codes was kept secret not just during the war but for decades after and only began to emerge in the 1970s. There may have been good security reasons for this, but the consequences for the site were catastrophic. Nothing was done to preserve the past and many of the huts, which had been thrown up in a hurry, filled with asbestos and never built to last, were allowed to rot away. 'Big challenge' The refurbishment project is complex. Some of the huts need to be stripped of asbestos and reconstructed - just not too much. "A real big challenge for us is that we don't take them back to looking too new," says Iain Standen. "They need to be looking slightly weathered at the corners." The idea is to have visitors taken back to the 1940s and to understand the often austere environment in which the work was taking place. Block C is in the worst state. It was used to hold the card index for all the material Bletchley Park had gleaned and which could be useful for breaking codes. A torch is needed to explore its darker recesses. Pigeons have taken over. One room, with a solitary green chair in the middle, looks more like something from a horror film. And yet the ambition is that this block will become a new visitor's centre, the first experience new arrivals have of the park. "It is our intention, when you step through the door here, you will be stepping back in time and you will be in the 1940s," explains Janie Price from Kennedy O'Callaghan, the architects involved. D-Day deadline The buildings are being restored thanks to a £7.4m Heritage Lottery Fund grant. It is targeted to be completed by June 2014, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, which Bletchley aided through its part in deception operations to convince Germany the invasion would take place elsewhere. "If Bletchley could do it on time then I've got to do it on time," says Steve Prowse who is project-managing the rebuild. "Some of the Bletchley atmosphere rubs off. If they were able to do this sort of work in these sort of conditions, then there's no excuse why we can't make it work."
I'm not convinced that the 'huts' are that important in themselves, the huts merely put a roof over what is important - the code breakers, whose achievements were immense. The huts are not of architectural interest (except to those that find slums and sink estates interesting), are in a terrible state and I believe only a few should be retained. However, if the huts retained in future house a visitor experience that "...when you step through the door here, you will be stepping back in time and you will be in the 1940s" then they will enhance the visit. I wish the Bletchley Park charity all the best in its aims. Don't forget gift aid! Best, Steve.
I believe the BP trust started in 1992. I first visited about 3-4 years later. the huts were there crumbling and rotting and have been ever since. I'm puzzled why nothing was done to stabilize them, even throwing a tarp over to keep the weather out may have helped. Must be pretty good well seasoned timber to have lasted so long with neglect. Not yer B&Q garden shed grade.