We went to visit Bletchley Park this afternoon, the rather dreary late Victorian country house which was bought for a song in 1938 (£6,000) to house the Government Code and Cypher School. I don’t know anywhere which is so redolent of the curious mixture of abstract intelligence which enabled the likes of Dilwyn Knox to crack the Enigma Code and at the same time the air of slight amateurism – the huts, the bicycles, the general discomfort.
I realise that quite a few people who were around at King’s, Cambridge when I was an undergraduate had been posted there: Christopher Morris, a genial historian who edited the Journeys of Celia Fiennes for the Cresset Press in 1947 had worked in Hut 5. John Saltmarsh, an eccentric, white-haired medievalist, worked in Hut 3. Jack Plumb, another Fellow of King’s at the outbreak of the war, was in Hut 8.
A key figure was Mavis Batey, one of the pioneers of garden history, who worked on the Italian Enigma Machine.
So, it wasn’t just mathematicians like Alan Turing. This is Turing’s desk:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I have visited Bletchley a number of times, and its next-door neighbour, the National Museum of Computing, which occupies many of the huts .
My late father remembered Station X and the rumours: “They’re all crackers”, he would say. ” They used to wander about in dressing gowns and slippers in the middle of the day!”. That may have been so but, they shortened the war by an estimated 2 years and saved countless lives in doing so. A fascinating place indeed.
Yes, a bit crackers perhaps, but incredibly inventive. Charles
Yes, indeed. I teach computer science. We are mostly a little strange. I like this 🙂
Dear Charles. You and I were contemporaries and historians at Cambridge. I was at St Catharines but in my second year you and I both lodged with the formidable Mrs Gedge in Cranmer Road. I knew Christopher Morris and his wife Helen quite well. The historians I knew best at Kings were Alan Macfarlane and Martin Ingram. They had quite a strong influence on my subsequent historical interest and methodology. I also, in later years, bought a few books from your brother in Curzon Street. I came across your blog by accident but it’s been a pleasant trip down memory lane. I shall follow it in future. Very best wishes Keith Cocker.
Dear Keith, How nice to hear from you. I loved that house in Cranmer Road. Stephen White and I had come bottom of the ballot, so were evicted to Cranmer Road, which couldn’t have been a nicer place to be. Did St. Catharine’s have the rooms on the ground floor ? Charles
Hello Charles, yes Cats had the three rooms on the ground floor. I was in the Bay window room, Chris Beaumont across the passage and A chap called Wyler in the third room. Now you mention it I remember Stephen White as well. It was a lovely place to be. We had the use of the garden didn’t we and although she could be ferocious Mrs Gedge was generally quite a tolerant landlady in the Cambridge of those days.
I only remember reading in the garden of Leckhampton next door – and I think it may even have had a swimming pool. Charles
very best wishes Keith