Tag Archives: Bletchley Park

I, Spy by Rhian Tracey

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I, Spy by Rhian Tracey is aimed at younger readers. The setting is Bletchley Park, beginning in 1939 as the oh-so ‘hush hush’ decryption centre is just being built and staffed.

Robyn is just 13 years old and she lives within Bletchley Park as her parents work there. She’s really interested in animals and nature so it’s an ideal environment for her, but as she won’t be allowed to travel in and out of Bletchley to go to school she’s told that she won’t be going back to school. She’s given an apprenticeship – learning to look after the carrier pigeons that are so important for delivering secret messages.

She’s quite pleased with it all although she’ll miss her schoolfriends, but then she makes friends with Ned who visits BP with his father for work purposes on a daily basis and things look up. Then Mary, a friend from school gets a job delivering messages within the sprawling Bletchley grounds.

The three friends get up to some high jinx. Robyn is sure that there’s a high profile spy within Bletchley and she’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

This was an enjoyable read although I found that I had to suspend my disbelief at times, particularly as Robyn was expecting her father to start giving her driving lessons on her 13th birthday!! Of course she would have to be 17 before that could happen. Her father didn’t keep his promise, but it just seemed such a strange thing for a 13 year old to expect, especially back then. I can see that this book will be popular with youngsters although I doubt if any children were allowed near the place.

My thanks to the publisher Piccadilly Press for giving me the opportunity to read a digital copy of this book via Netgalley. I,Spy will be published on 2nd, March.

I enjoyed the setting which was very recognisably Bletchley Park, if you want to see what it looks like nowadays you can see some photos I took there fairly recently here, here and here.

Bletchley Park – part 3

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Here we are back at Bletchley Park, inside the mansion this time, as you can see from the hallway it’s very Victorian.

Bletchley Park Mansion entrance

There’s a lot of oak panelling in the library below, in fact there’s a lot of oak panelling all over the house.

Bletchley Park Mansion Library 1

I have no idea what happened to the original books, possibly they were sold off in the 1930s when the house became government property. The shelves have been filled with book club books and a lot of what I suppose can be called domestic fiction. No doubt it’s very down market compared with what was originally on the shelves but if these books had been for sale, I would have been very happy to give some of them a new home!

Mansion Library, Bletchley Park, codebreaking, WW2

Mansion Library books, Bletchley Park, codebreaking, WW2

Bletchley Park Mansion Library 4

I think the room below is the brightest and prettiest room in the house, from what we were able to see anyway. It’s done out as an office but must have been a sitting room or drawing room when the house was a home.

Bletchley Park Mansion room & ceiling

There are quite a few very ornate ceilings in the Victorian style.

Bletchley Park, Mansion ornate ceiling

Including the lovely glass ceiling below in what must have been a garden room or consevatory.

Bletchley Park, Mansion glass ceiling

If I’m remembering correctly the room below was the ballroom with its linenfold panelling, not as large as I expected it to be, I calculated that you might be able to fit in four sets of Scottish country dancers for reels, with six people in each set, but it would be plenty big enough if dancers were just waltzing. Rather worryingly this room smelled of damp, I didn’t notice that anywhere else. I noticed in the news last night that Bletchley Park had been awarded over a million pounds, I know where some of it should be spent!

Bletchley Park, Mansion wood Panelling

Bletchley Park was a great day out.

Bletchley Park – part 2

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Here we are back at Bletchley Park, the World War 2 codebreaking centre. The photo below is of a sentry box which would have been manned or maybe womanned I suppose (or maybe not) by some one asking you for your papers before you could get past the gate.

Bletchley Park Sentry Box

Below is a corner of Alan Turing’s office, all of the offices are very dark, I don’t think they had any windows which would make sense when you’re keeping things secret but must have made working there even more claustraphobic.

Alen Turing's Office, Bletchley Park, codebreaking, WW2

As ever, click the photos if you want to see them enlarged. I find it so sad that Alan Turing was so badly treated by the powers that be – after the war. He certainly didn’t get any thanks for his efforts at winning the war.

Alan Turing's Office, Bletchley Park, codebreaking, WW2

Below is a fairly recently made statute of Alan Turing, it seems to have been constructed using pieces of slate piled on top of each other, it’s quite effective though.

Alan Turing Statue, Bletchey Park

The main codebreakers seem to have lived in estate cottages close to the huts and the mansion house, you can’t see inside them but they look very cute from the outside.

Bletchley Park Cottages

Bletchley Park Cottages,

Bletchley Park Cottages

I like the design of the leaded glass windows, presumably this was the bathroom.

Bletchley Park Cottages window

At least they didn’t have to travel far after a long shift of calculations and code wrangling.

Bletchley Park Cottages

Bletchley Park

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When we drove down south last week for our first time away from home since Covid appeared our first day was entirely taken up by a visit to Bletchley Park, the World War 2 codebreaking centre, it’s close to the new town of Milton Keynes. There was a lot to see. Below is a stitched photo of the country house the building of which began in 1883, originally owned by a financier and politician, by the time he died in the 1930s nobody in his family wanted the house and it was eventually acquired by the government and so became a centre for secret war work. The location was ideal as it has great transport links for London and there was plenty of space in the sprawling estate to accommodate the 8 or 9,000 people who ended up working there. The workers were mainly farmed out to any local people who had a spare bedroom – whether they wanted a lodger or not. The stars of the show though were given estate cottages to live in. At one point there was a queue of people at the right hand door, waiting to go in for their afternoon tea, sadly that had to be booked so we couldn’t partake. We made do with soup and bread from the cafe.

Bletchley Mansion Stitch

There are still lovely trees and a lake on the estate although obviously lots of the land was built on.

Bletchley Park Lake

There are ‘huts’ and buildings all over the place, but there are loads more waiting to be refurbished. That’s not going to be cheap going by the amount of ‘danger asbestos’ signs we saw!

Bletchley Park Building

Inside the huts are spartan, I don’t think they would have been very comfortable to work in, I felt quite claustrophobic just walking through them for a short time.

Bletchley Park Hut Corridor, WW2 codebreaking

Bletchley Park Hut Poster , WW2, codebreaking

Of course they not only had to break codes but also had to translate them from numerous languages such as Japanese as well as German.

Index Cards Japanese, Bletchley Park, codebreaking ,WW2

They managed to do that using the enigma machines such as the one below, it’s smaller than an old typewriter, there are lots of machines on display.

enigma machine, WW2, Bletchley Park, codebreaking

enigma machines, Bletchley Park, WW2 ,codebreaking

We took lots of photos but I’ll keep those for future posts. Almost more amazing than the work that went on in this area is the fact that the Germans never had an inkling of its existence which is incredible when you think of the thousands of people who worked here and all the people who lived nearby. It was all ‘hush hush’ and it stayed that way until someone wrote a book about it in 1974. There must have been no spies at the local electricity plant as the amount of power used here to work all the machinery must have been enormous. I can’t imagine people keeping ‘mum’ in that way nowadays.