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Bletchley Park Gets £4.6 Million Restoration
mikejuk writes "Bletchley Park has secured a £4.6 million Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the establishment of a visitor center dedicated to the World War II Codebreakers. This year saw the unveiling of a new memorial to the Codebreakers in the grounds of Bletchley Park by the Queen. Shortly after her visit, a new fundraising campaign for the restoration of the iconic huts where the code-breaking teams worked was inaugurated, with help and sponsorship from Google. The grant will enable the restoration of Codebreaking Huts 1, 3 and 6, and create a world-class visitor center and exhibition in the currently derelict Block C. The Bletchley Park Trust has launched the 'Action This Day' campaign to raise the match funding now needed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_Year
It is a shame that on their site there is nothing about polish "coders" who in 1932 broke the enigma code and made it available for British and French intelligence...
You didn't look very hard. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/polish.rhtm
i hope they have recognition for the brave crew of U571 and Matthew McConaughey
Did you miss the point that it was mainly secret in its working days (so it was in a quiet town, in the middle of nowhere, away from German bombs) but is now in a modern-day town where it has zero impact on the local economy, that most of the equipment was destroyed afterwards (and hence what you see is the result of DECADES of restoration work of then-top-secret equipment of which virtually nothing original remains), that the building has been derelict (hence the raising of money) ever since it was *deliberately* cleared and abandoned decades ago? At the moment it is *literally* run by fanatics, not cash, so a few scavenged posters is all they have left after reconstructing all that equipment. Everything else is in planning stages.
You don't preserve the place by turning into The Canterbury Tales with talking characters, etc. especially with ZERO funding that they've had up until now (hence this being a news story that they CAN actually put something there now - and so they should).
Like the Stalag that I went to visit in Germany last year that was nothing more than a bit of grass with some vague building outlines on and a little building with old movies/photos, it was never designed to be a tourist attraction and still isn't except for those who understand what it WAS.
That said, my brother has taken Scout groups to Bletchley several times (he was given a valve-amp, by someone who worked there on the reconstruction, for the kids to study) - so long as you set the scene and explain what's going on there, it's still pretty interesting.
The preservation of it is important but IT HASN'T STARTED. Not properly. For decades it's just been people saying it *should* be preserved but they have literally only just been given the funds to do so - and in ten years time it will be a more interesting place to take your kids.
Personally, I'd rather they built any museum / exhibit close-by and preserved the original buildings as best they could but I doubt it will happen.
... then you're not a true pacifist because thats what most people think. Very few people see war as a laugh. A true pacifist would never advocate war no matter what and would sooner see himself and his entire family tortured and killed than raise an arm in anger. Basically they're simply cowards dressing up their cowardise as a political idiology.
Too bad they can't give Alan Turing his life back.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade